


Hold in the Night

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Blow Jobs, Cutting, Developing Relationship, Eating Disorders, Flirting, Hand Jobs, Inline with canon, Language Barrier, Loss of Limbs, Love Confessions, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-05-31 18:46:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15125636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "The only alternative is to be left behind, and that is no choice at all, as far as he is concerned." Fai takes an opportunity, and Kurogane does what he needs to.





	1. Patient

Fai takes his time.

He doesn’t rush forward. There are other things to worry about, when they first arrive in their newest universe disoriented and lost: their absent companions, first, followed very immediately by their inability to communicate at all. The second problem answers the first, in a way: or, at least, it makes it clear that a search is likely to be far more involved than pacing out a few blocks and shouting themselves hoarse. Fai would tells his one remaining companion so, would talk him through the logic of it with the patience that tips towards teasing between them; but Fai lacks the words that the other will understand, and when Kurogane storms out across the field on which they’ve landed with the names of their missing companions turned liquid and foreign on his tongue by his native vowels, Fai has no choice left to him but to follow. The only alternative is to be left behind, and that is no choice at all, as far as he is concerned.

The first few days are the hardest. Kurogane spends hours pacing across unfamiliar territory, shouting for Shaoran and Sakura and even Mokona, occasionally. Eventually he turns on his heel to grab at Fai’s shirtfront and shake the other while he growls what is certainly a judgment close against the wide-open innocence of his companion’s expression; Fai doesn’t understand a word of it, even if he can make a reasonable guess as to the reason behind Kurogane’s tight-wound frustration. He just meets the other’s eyes levelly, and flashes a smile that tenses behind his eyes, and says, “I don’t understand you, Kuro-tan.” Kurogane just frowns the harder at him, his forehead creasing to match his mouth as he glares at Fai as if it’s the other’s fault they’ve had everything but each other stripped from them, and then he drops his hold and turns to pace away again, his shoulders hunched on the awareness that Fai feels as the familiar, suffocating weight of resignation over his shoulders.

They do better for themselves than Fai would expect. Fai is good at speaking the silent language of casual gestures and easy smiles; he’s learned to provide the illusion of sincerity underneath every expression of happiness he offers, and the barrier of an unknown language is almost none at all when it comes to conveying their good will and lack of hostility. And Kurogane can make himself understood, in some kind of struggling fashion; it turns out it’s enough for Fai to smile his way into friendliness while Kurogane stumbles through a half-formed explanation, and whatever their hosts may think of them it’s enough to find them unmurdered and placed in a room that at least appears to be for guests more than for prisoners.

Kurogane spends the first weeks searching. The effort is futile, Fai knows it to be; they are lost in a universe alone, without so much as verification that their companions are even in this same plane of existence. They may be entirely elsewhere, slipped sideways at the hand of the dimensional witch and thrown into dangers of their own; however much Kurogane may shout, the rumble of his voice cannot stretch into another world entirely. But Fai can’t explain his resignation, couldn’t even if he and Kurogane shared more speech than they did, so he follows him in silence, listening to the rasp of the other’s voice echo around him while he faces the reality of the situation in isolation. They are trapped here, without Mokona with them; and with the miracle of a reappearance delayed day after day, the odds of continuing on to any other universe grow slimmer with every breath. Fai can watch the knowledge of that heap itself onto Kurogane’s shoulders and bear down to urge the other into a hunch as if to defend himself from the realization; he can feel it like a knot in his own chest, something between loss and relief, because however selfish it may be, perhaps he can yet be safe here, even at the cost of Kurogane’s wish to return to his own home.

They grow more comfortable with each day. Domesticity creeps into the edges of their shared life, settling into the drowsy haze of early mornings and wrapping itself as close against them as the steam rising from the meals they eat in silence. Kurogane is speaking more fluidly with those that Fai thinks of as their hosts, now, more than their captors, but without any way to communicate between the two of them his increasing fluency is helpful to Fai only in the relative security of safety it grants him. Fai feels himself adrift, an island cast alone in the middle of a rushing river, locked away from the people around him by the silence forced on him by his lack of communication. It’s a lonely feeling, as if he’s watching the world through a pane of glass that he can feel but can’t cross; but there’s a relief to it, too, to knowing there is no one around him that will understand anything he says. He can spill truth from his lips, can speak of any subject he wishes; if he couples it with a smile, neither Kurogane nor their hosts can frame the difference between polite nonsense and Fai’s life story.

During the days Fai speaks less -- his words are a distraction to the struggle to communicate Kurogane is making, and he can pay better attention to the shape of the conversation if he’s silent in himself -- but in the quiet of the evenings, when Kurogane has fallen into his usual habit of stoic silence, Fai sprawls out into the space left unoccupied, tipping his head back and opening his mouth and letting the sound of his voice fill the whole of their shared space. He speaks about nothing, about everything, about history and fairy tales and daydreams and arguments, on and on and on to the closest thing to an audience he has. Kurogane almost never responds, his voice apparently held back by his own awareness of the pointlessness of attempted communication, but he watches all the time, his eyes fixed on Fai and his mouth pulling onto a frown as if he might be able to make sense of the other’s words if he just focuses hard enough. The thought makes Fai smile, the curve of his mouth as sincere as any expression he can find for himself, and he goes on speaking, talking to Kurogane as if the other is understanding him, forming a tapestry of illusion to make their room a home, to make himself understood, to make their companionship something more than the forced connection Fai knows it to be.

They linger like that for days, weeks, over the whole length of a month and tipping over into a second. At the end of the third week Kurogane doesn’t get up after dinner to pace through his usual efforts for their lost companions; he speaks to a servant instead to make a request Fai doesn’t understand until the man returns with a bottle and a pair of cups to go with it. Kurogane slides one of the cups across the table towards Fai, setting it into an invitation that needs no words to grant it clarity, and when he tips the bottle to fill his own glass Fai extends his across the distance to accept with the same coherent grace. The alcohol has a light flavor, something that burns the back of Fai’s tongue and glows sweet down the whole of his throat, and they drink the entirety of the bottle between them before Kurogane drags himself sideways to collapse into the bedroll that he has claimed as his own. Fai watches Kurogane for long minutes after, feeling the assumed smile at his lips fade to consideration as Kurogane’s shoulders relax and his breathing slows into rest; and then he upends his cup to swallow back the last of the liquor inside, and wraps himself in his own blankets to wait for morning to break over the slow-forming structure of a plan.

They don’t go back out again. Kurogane persisted in his search far longer than Fai would have thought reasonable; even now, with the cups and the familiar tang of drink to ease the length of the evenings, Fai is never sure the other won’t decide to resume his efforts to find their lost companions. But Kurogane stays with him, held by the comfort of intoxication, Fai thinks, more than the endless patter of the other’s voice, and Fai keeps talking, spilling words like the liquid Kurogane pours into their cups as he lets the signs of intoxication slide over his tongue and slur across his speech. Kurogane watches him throughout, gazing that absolute focus across the table at Fai like he’s truly listening, as if he understands any part of Fai’s rippling speech. Fai thinks that might be more intoxicating than the glow of the alcohol filling his veins and splashing at the edges of his cup, if he’s honest with himself; but that he never is, unless forced to it, and in the isolation of his personal language he has nothing to fear at all.

“Give us another,” he says now, leaning in across the table as he gestures with his mostly-empty cup at the bottle Kurogane is reaching for. Kurogane gives him a flat look that carries enough frustration that Fai doesn’t need words to understand it, but he obeys as well, reaching out to pour another mouthful of liquid into Fai’s offered cup even before he tops off his own. Fai tips his head back to swallow it at once, his throat working hard against the burn of the alcohol as it goes down, and when he moves to set his cup back at the table it’s with force to serve as a punctuation for his inebriation.

“This is good stuff,” he says, his voice a little too loud and his smile a little too easy as he looks up to beam at Kurogane across from him. Kurogane is far less visibly affected than Fai seems to be, but the bottle is nearing its end, and there’s a care to the motion of his hands that says he’s feeling the effect as much as the other. Fai doesn’t have to try for the beaming approval he offers for the dark of Kurogane’s eyes fixed on him. “If I had to get lost in a different universe with someone, I’m glad it’s at least someone I can drink with!”

Kurogane frowns and says something; Fai doesn’t understand the words, but he laughs like he does and leans in to rest his elbow hard against the edge of the table in front of him.

“Sakura is fun too,” he says. “And Shaoran’s entertaining, even if he does fall asleep. Mokona always had the best store of alcohol no matter where we were, I don’t know where it all came from. But still.” Fai lets his head rest hard against the support of his hand, tipping in to the side so he can smile hazily at Kurogane before him as he lifts his hand to cross over the distance and brush at the weight of the other’s sleeve. “I’d glad to be with you.”

Kurogane looks down at Fai’s fingers against his sleeve. He still has his cup in one hand en route to his mouth but he’s forgotten it’s there, or maybe has just set aside his focus on the alcohol for a moment in exchange for his attention on the contact brushing against him; there’s a crease lining his forehead and a weight burdening the corners of his mouth, but he doesn’t jerk his hand away from Fai’s touch, and that’s good enough to proceed with.

Fai takes a breath and shudders over the exhale like he’s about to embark on some dramatic confession. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying,” he murmurs, turning the words soft, as if they carry far more emotion than they do in reality. “I could be saying anything at all and you’d never know the difference.” He slides his fingers in closer, easing his hold up and around Kurogane’s wrist until the whole of his hand is pressing close to the other’s skin before he lifts his gaze to look up through his lashes at the man before him. Kurogane is watching his face again instead of his hand; the crease at his forehead is deeper now than it was. His eyes are unreadable, shadowed into darkness even as he meets Fai’s gaze from across the table, but he’s still not pulling away, even if Fai can feel the tension of the other’s body radiating out into the weight of his fingers at Kurogane’s skin.

“I wonder what you think I’m doing,” Fai says. He touches his thumb against Kurogane’s wrist, tracing against the other’s skin as he draws in and down. Kurogane’s skin is surprisingly soft under his touch; Fai would never have expected such delicate skin from a man whose palms are lined with the calluses of training and battle alike. “Do you think I’m drunk?” He huffs a smile and tips his head to the side at the idea. “It’s not the alcohol. I’ve been thinking about this even before we got ourselves stranded here.” He closes his fingers into a gentle clasp, the shape of a restraint with none of the strength to grant it form. “This just seemed like a golden opportunity.”

Fai pushes his touch up against the line of Kurogane’s arm, trailing the contact across the tension of muscle under the other’s skin and up towards the inside of his elbow. Kurogane hisses a breath and speaks again, something short and sharp enough to carry the force of the question clearly even without Fai understanding the words that go into it. Fai lifts his chin and lets himself laugh, the sound warm on sincerity even as his fingers urge Kurogane’s sleeve up higher on his arm to lay tan skin bare for the illumination in their room.

“What would you believe, if you could understand me?” he asks. “I could tell you that it’s meaningless. The alcohol, the nighttime, the stress: we’re tense, it will be for the best to work off some of the anxiety.” His thumb catches against the inside of Kurogane’s elbow and his arm stretches to the limit of its reach; Fai braces his hold in place as he rocks up onto his knees so he can come around the edge of the table and slide closer to Kurogane, gaining greater proximity and placing himself in reach of Kurogane’s as-yet-unmoving hands at once.

“I could say that I want you.” He lifts his free hand up and out, reaching over the distance between them as delicately as if he’s moving through the steps of a dance to land his fingers against the back of Kurogane’s neck, to draw his touch down just inside the neckline of the other’s loose robe. Kurogane takes a breath at that; it’s softer than before but Fai can hear it clearly, as near as he is. He rocks in closer, moving until his knees are brushing against Kurogane’s thigh where the other is sitting cross-legged at the far side of the table; as he urges his fingers higher into the soft dark of Kurogane’s hair he ducks his head forward and shuts his eyes as he takes a breath to fill his lungs with the heat of the air glowing with potential between them. “That I’ve desired you since I first laid eyes on you, that I’ve dreamt of the touch of your hands, of the heat of your body.” His hand against Kurogane’s neck tenses, his fingers press in close against the strain under the other’s skin; when Fai turns his head it’s to shudder a breath against Kurogane’s neck, to offer the heat of his exhale against the line of the other’s jaw. “That I love you.” Fai lingers for a moment, feeling the glow of heat in his chest, pacing the thrum of Kurogane’s heart pounding in the line of his throat; and then he huffs a breath and lets the strain in his fingers go as he rocks back by an inch, just enough to turn his attention to the other’s face instead of his neck.

“But that would all be a lie,” he says, letting a smile flicker across his lips. Kurogane looks up to track the expression at his face; the crease between the weight of his brows is still there, as clear as a thunderstorm on a distant horizon, but his frown has softened, the strain of judgment at his lips melted into confusion or consideration, Fai can’t be sure which. His hand has lowered, too; the cup he was holding is at the table now, his open palm resting slack just alongside it. Fai glances at it, casting his attention sideways through his lashes before he takes a breath and tips his head to look back to the dark of Kurogane’s gaze on him.

“It’s convenient,” he says, speaking clearly and fitting the words to the tilt of his smile, the wry twist at his lips as he gazes down at the man sitting before him and looking up like he’s listening to the words falling with as much meaning as the sound of rain on glass. “It’s as simple as that, nothing more and nothing less. You’re here, and I’m here, and we may be here forever with each other, and won’t that be easier to bear together?” He draws his hand up through Kurogane’s hair, urging his touch through the strands as his fingers spread wide to cradle against the back of the other’s head; Kurogane leans into the resistance, pushing back so he can keep his eyes on Fai’s face. Fai looks down into the dark of those eyes -- black, now, cast as thoroughly into the shading by circumstances as by the demands of the universe into which they have fallen -- and he smiles wider as his fingers curl into a hold around Kurogane’s arm in his hand.

“You have my permission,” he says, and pulls to urge Kurogane’s hand up from where it’s lying against the support of the table, to draw the other’s touch up across the distance between them. “I want you. You want me too, I think.” His grip tugs Kurogane closer, urging the other’s hand towards him; Kurogane’s fingers brush against the weight of Fai’s clothes, the contact slack and unresisting. Kurogane’s gaze drops down to track the friction, his mouth tightens towards a frown again, and Fai smiles unseen at the top of the other’s head.

“It doesn’t matter,” he murmurs, his voice gentle as a caress, tender as an endearment. “Nothing will change.” His weight rocks forward, his shoulders tilt in; Kurogane’s gaze flickers up towards his face through the heavy shadow of his lashes and Fai tips his head and spreads a smile out over his face. “What do you say, Kuro-chan?”

Kurogane gazes up at Fai for a moment. His expression is still tense; not on confusion, Fai thinks, but just focus, like he’s considering every detail of the moment, taking stock of every part of the present. For a moment Fai’s skin shivers as if with a chill, as if Kurogane’s gaze can somehow pick apart the disguise of his native tongue, as if the other will unravel the retroactive meaning of Fai’s words via the intensity of his gaze. For a moment it seems as if Kurogane is going to speak, is going to form the words of an answer in truth against his tongue; but when his lips part it’s only to huff an exhale, and when he moves it’s to take back control of his hand from Fai’s encouraging motion. His palm raises to catch at the curve of Fai’s back, his touch firm enough to pin the silk-soft of the other’s robes to his skin, and Kurogane turns his head up into the light as if he’s offering the stoic lines of his expression for Fai’s gaze.

“Fai,” he says, the other’s name clear even drawn out to foreign softness, and then he lifts his other hand to push his fingers up into the fall of the other’s hair. Fai smiles as Kurogane’s fingers press against his head, satisfaction at even this small victory a warmth against the shadows of the present, and then Kurogane’s hand pulls hard against the back of his head and Fai submits to the force of Kurogane’s urging with consummate grace.

It’s a hasty indulgence. The taste of the alcohol is burning at the back of Fai’s throat and lingering sweet against Kurogane’s tongue against his, its effects pushing them both sideways from their usual stability; and there’s all those months of patient waiting, of tension building behind dark stares and bright laughter until Fai thinks both he and Kurogane could almost touch the strain like a physical wall between them. It’s strange to have it gone, to reach out and find the imagined resistance wholly absent; Fai finds himself marveling over that basic reality even as Kurogane’s mouth urges heat to his skin and his own hands slide in and down to unravel the composure of Kurogane’s clothes and free the glow of his skin for the light. Kurogane is breathing hard by the time Fai curls his fingers around him, and he comes as quickly, hissing through his pleasure for the price of a few quick motions of Fai’s hand. It might be disappointing, in other circumstances, but by the time Kurogane is spilling across Fai’s grip he has his own hand bracing hard at Fai’s hip and is putting those battle-hardened calluses to better use in stroking over his partner’s length, and Fai doesn’t have the time to do anything but press his forehead hard against Kurogane’s shoulder and let himself fall to slack surrender to the wave of release Kurogane urges him into. Fai hears his voice break over a moan, feels the spasm of heat ripple convulsive strain through the whole of his body against Kurogane’s lap, and when the pleasure passes to leave him spent and heavy he lets himself fall slack into the support of the other’s arms, relying on Kurogane’s hold to keep him upright while he shuts his eyes and breathes himself back to reality.

Nothing changes, really. Their days are the same, stumbling conversations and polite smiles, unfamiliar clothes and foreign food and the distance imposed on them by the absence of the translator that gave them understanding of the other’s speech if nothing else. The only difference is that their beds are drawn alongside each other now instead of apart, and that they spend the evenings as often in pleasure as in alcohol: a fair trade, Fai thinks, for the same result. That is all it is, in the end: a convenience, a relief, a means to pass the time that stretches out endlessly before them with no one but each other as a grounding point. It doesn’t really matter, it changes nothing of import: but it eases some of the tension along Kurogane’s shoulders, and it warms some part of Fai’s skin for some stretch of time, and that’s enough to be worthwhile.

Under the circumstances, Fai will take whatever comfort he can find.


	2. Unresisting

Kurogane should have resisted.

He knows it. He’s known it all this time, from the first moment blue eyes caught his and Fai flickered that smile like starlight at him, the bright flash of put-upon pleasure that never touched the ice behind his eyes. There’s a reason Kurogane didn’t reach out, a logic to the distance he kept over the first handful of travels they made: there’s a danger there, an edge sharp as a blade and impossible to see, and he doesn’t know which of them will be more hurt if they once fall into it. So he resisted, he held back and held off and if he stared he didn’t touch, and if he thought he didn’t act, because Fai is beautiful as blown glass and Kurogane doesn’t know if he will shatter for the touching.

Things are different in Shura. Kurogane had taught himself how to work his way around Fai, to throw himself into teaching the boy or looking after the girl or bickering with the thing that calls itself Mokona; the others were a welcome distraction, a way to pull away when the lure became too strong, when Fai held Kurogane’s gaze for long heartbeats and his smile started to look more like a plea than a warning. But there is no one else in Shura, however long Kurogane shouts for them; and Fai is adrift, trapped by his own speech from communicating with any of those around him as much as from Kurogane himself. The language is strange, so foreign to Kurogane’s ear that it takes him longer than it should to identify familiar shapes of speech, to pick out words similar to those in his own tongue; but Fai just watches, and smiles, and his thoughts stay locked behind the barrier of his language as much as the dark of his shadow-blackened eyes.

Maybe things would have been different, otherwise. Kurogane wonders what he would have done if it were Fai who were doing the speaking for him, if he could have borne the isolation of silence better on his own shoulders than to watch it on Fai’s. Maybe Fai would have never reached out in the first place, were their positions reversed; maybe it’s just comfort he craves, a connection to bridge the gap of speech. Kurogane doesn’t know what it is that pulls Fai’s touch across the table that first night, that brings those delicate fingers skimming his skin as if to script a spell into the marrow of his bones; all he knows is that Fai touches him, and Fai looks at him, and Fai steals Kurogane’s resistance until all he has left to offer is surrender.

There is a relief to it. After all the months of anxious distance, of holding himself at the greatest remove he could muster and feeling the strain with every inhale, there is a pleasure just in capitulating, in letting himself fall into the urging of Fai’s hands and the invitation of Fai’s smile. He likes stripping Fai down to see the moonlight-pale glow of his skin under the candlelight of their bedroom; he likes pressing his hands to Fai’s shoulders, hips, thighs, to shaping out the curves of the other’s body under the slide of his fingertips as he matches reality to fantasy, as imagination overlays and forms itself to physical presence. It’s harder to see the edge of tension on Fai’s lips when the other is occupied in pressing his mouth close against every scar he can find across Kurogane’s body, and if there’s anything Kurogane can be sure of it’s that the sounds he pulls free from Fai’s throat are the most sincere thing he’s ever heard from the other. There is still a tension there, still a host of things left unsaid, admissions not made and confessions held back; but their mutual desire is certain, and Kurogane turns himself to urging them both to satisfaction with the same focus he has brought to every fight he’s had up until now.

Fai likes to talk. He speaks to fill the span of their evenings, spilling words as if Kurogane can pick out any meaning from his voice beyond the occasional dip of a familiar name or the slurred-long taunt of the nicknames Fai drops as easily as rain once they’re alone in their shared quarters. Kurogane can track the rise of desire in the other from the sound of his voice, from the way he purrs over heat at the back of his tongue and the way his smile shapes itself to softness even before he reaches out to slide his fingers into the binding of Kurogane’s clothes, and Kurogane responds as much to the laughter of appreciation on Fai’s tone when he’s urging his hand down to press against the other or panting against the strain Fai is pulling into him as to the friction of the other’s hands or mouth. It’s Fai who fills the silence, who occupies the air with speech as if desperate to drown out the sound of their breathing or the gasps of their pleasure, until Kurogane wonders occasionally what it might take to close his mouth at last, to win the resonance of silence from that too-ready tongue.

Kurogane doesn’t try to quiet him. He likes the sound of Fai’s voice too much, even if the words are rendered meaningless to his ears by his lack of comprehension of them, and he has nothing better to offer for himself. Affection aches at the inside of his chest, a pressure that burdens the rhythm of his heart and strains his breathing even when he’s gasping through the shuddering force of pleasure; he thinks he is more choked by the desire he feels than quickened by it. Fai speaks, offering words to the air, to the ceiling, to the dip of Kurogane’s shoulder; and Kurogane closes his mouth, and gazes, and holds whatever he is feeling inside himself while it grows with every passing night, while it lingers into every new dawn.

They take what they can. Kurogane doesn’t know what it is Fai wants from him: amusement, release, the simple comfort of human touch. He doubts it’s what he has to offer, what swells unsatisfied within him no matter how many orgasms Fai’s ready fingers and quick tongue pull from him; but Fai can’t ask, even if he wanted, and there is no one to hear what words Kurogane might think to offer all unprompted. Maybe it would have been better to resist, to have gone without this, to have saved himself from the ache of want too much to be satisfied by the friction of warm skin and the pant of humid breathing; but having once tasted, touched, held, Kurogane can’t help but reach out for more, can’t help but crave what intimacy Fai will give him, what sincerity he can lure from the forced curve of that too-ready smile.

Kurogane appreciates those moments, when he can claim them. Fai always starts things between them, is always ready to slide under Kurogane’s blankets or reach into Kurogane’s clothes to skim his touch over the other’s body before he’s even ducked his head into a kiss; it’s easy to surrender to that, to give in to the urging of the other’s touch and the ache of desire and spend himself into physical pleasure, if nothing else. And it’s after, with his shoulders trembling on relief and his breathing hard with anticipation, that Kurogane can do as he’s doing now, and turn in to urge Fai back down to the sheets, and set about his goal of seducing as much honesty as he can wring from those heat-parted lips and those universe-shadowed eyes.

“ _Ah_ ,” Fai whimpers, his shoulders straining against the sheets as his hands fist in Kurogane’s hair, tightening for a moment of pressure before easing on deliberate attention to urge down the other’s back. “Kuro-chan.” The nickname comes clear, even drawn through the accent that Kurogane has learned to appreciate if not to understand; it’s one of the few points of understanding they still have left to them, beyond the simple clarity of hands and mouths and bodies. Kurogane huffs over an exhale at the back of his throat, a vague gesture towards the protest he would have once voiced, but his attention is elsewhere, with Fai’s hands fanning like wings over his shoulders and the arch of Fai’s body curving up beneath him to meet the shadowed weight of his own. Kurogane thinks about that sometimes, about what it would feel like to fit his body into the shape of Fai’s, to have Fai’s pleasure spilling directly into his own, without the distinction between them that yet remains; but Fai has never offered, and Kurogane doesn’t ask, even by touch. Enough to have Fai’s body hot under his gaze, to have Fai’s hands sliding down to spill his loose robe off his shoulders and bare the curve of his back; and Kurogane ducks his head, and fixes his attention on the stroke of his fingers, and pulls up with a rhythm greater even than what he struck before. Fai moans under him, encouragement as clear against his lips as in the upward tilt of his hips, and Kurogane can feel his shoulders tensing on anticipation as much for the other’s impending pleasure as for his own still sticky at his stomach and across Fai’s sliding touch at his back.

Kurogane feels his descent the most keenly, at moments like this. There is a vivid clarity to this experience, with his own body heavy with satisfaction and his focus dedicated exclusively to finding the same from beneath Fai’s smooth-masked exterior; every touch brings forth a detail he has never seen before, every gasping breath breaks from Fai’s lips like an epiphany. Kurogane can linger in this, or can urge Fai on to strain the edges of his limits, can guide them both through this moment of rare intimacy as he sees fit; and beneath him he can watch Fai, his reactions too immediate and too heated to be restrained by his usual adopted composure. This is instinct, reflex acting before rationality can cut in: the tremor of Fai’s thigh, the arch of his foot, even the dig of his fingernails scoring warm-glowing marks across Kurogane’s back. Even his expression is starting to give way, as the focus in his eyes slides up to the ceiling instead of holding to Kurogane’s face, as the smile at his lips begins to melt to the heat of his breathing, and Kurogane can’t look away, can no more stop himself than he can choose to cease the rush of blood through his veins. Fai’s lashes flutter, Kurogane’s heart skips; Fai’s lips part, Kurogane’s throat closes tight. He can see lines of tension forming at the corners of Fai’s eyes, can see the strain of the other’s smile giving way to the open-mouth gasping that always comes just before the breaking point, the presage of the brief clarity of perfect sincerity that always comes with the collapse of the other’s restraint and his surrender to his release, if only for the span of a heartbeat.

Fai’s head tips back, the line of his neck straining as his jaw sets, as his fingers tighten, and Kurogane keeps moving without speeding or slowing his pace, holding to the tempo he has set as if it’s the rhythm of his heart beating in his chest instead of the stroke of his fingers up over Fai’s length. Fai’s knee tilts up, his forehead creases, his back arches to angle him up tight against Kurogane’s grip; and Kurogane pulls, and Fai groans, “ _Kuro_ ” hot as flame at his lips as the sound spills from his lips and his cock spills over Kurogane’s hold. Fai collapses back to the sheets, all the tension in his body going slack to pour him like liquid over the bed, and Kurogane watches him, his attention wound to the soft of Fai’s lips and the unstructured dip of his lashes. There’s no space for acting, no room for deception, even that kindly intentioned; there’s just Fai, his cheeks flushed and his lips damp and his whole expression knocked out-of-focus by the pleasure Kurogane has just worked from him. Kurogane stares at him, his focus pinning down the details of Fai’s presence as his fingers work the last aftershocks of pleasure from the other’s body; and something in his chest eases, some knot in his throat loosens, and words spill from his tongue before he can catch them back.

“I love you.”

Kurogane’s skin goes cold at once. He hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t intended to set free those words; however true they may be, he’s seen the way Fai looks at him, has stared into the polished-smooth wall that lives behind the other’s gaze, that holds itself around the other’s heart. This is too much to say, too much to offer, even without expectation of reciprocation; Kurogane’s body tenses on anticipation of a blow, of the retreat that must surely follow his too-much honesty. Fai can’t respond, can’t accept, can’t--and then there are fingers at his cheek, a touch urging Kurogane’s gaze up, and in the first shock of the contact Kurogane has a surge of something like hope in his chest, some dizzy spill of excitement as his gaze swings up to meet Fai’s.

Fai isn’t frowning, isn’t glaring. There’s none of the rejection that Kurogane was braced for, that Kurogane was expecting; but neither is there softness, the gentle warmth that would mean the answer Kurogane can’t dare to hope Fai would allow himself. There’s a crease at the other’s forehead, a line of confusion between his brows and a frown of concern at his lips, and it’s in the dark of the other’s eyes that Kurogane can see his own words reflected back to meaningless sound in the air.

Fai says something, the shape too much for Kurogane to parse but the lift at the end enough to make it a question. Kurogane blinks hard and shakes his head.

“Nothing,” he says. His voice drags to a rasp in his throat. “It’s nothing.”

Fai’s mouth twists onto a smile, tugging up into lopsided amusement as his touch urges back in against Kurogane’s hair. He says something else, softly enough that Kurogane doesn’t think it was intended for him, and then his hand curls against the back of Kurogane’s neck and Fai tilts his head up to angle into an invitation. The suggestion is as clear as Fai’s willingness; as clear as his complete incomprehension of those words that seemed so painfully obvious ringing in Kurogane’s ears. For a moment Kurogane can’t move to answer Fai’s offer; he’s too caught between relief and disappointment, too perfectly balanced between the two to know which will win out. Then Fai’s lashes flicker, his eyes open to meet Kurogane’s gaze, and: “Kuro-sama?” he says, his tone still teasing but with the beginnings of tension on it enough to unravel the airy pleasure of his smile. Shadows are coming back into his gaze, his mouth is softening towards uncertainty as he looks up at the other, and Kurogane can feel the ache in his heart like it’s printed to clarity across his face. He shakes his head again, feeling the attempt useless before it’s begun, and then he gives up on trying to repress his expression and ducks down to hide in the distraction of a kiss instead.

At least in that he knows he’ll be understood.


	3. Rejected

Everything is different, after the change.

Fai can feel it: in his breath, in his blood, aching down like a wound in the very marrow of his bones. His vision is too clear, crystalline and strangely faceted in a way that makes him dizzily, nauseatingly aware of the shadow that has taken the place of his missing eye. He can see details he could never see before, could never have imagined before: embroidery from across the distance of a room, the sound of breathing a hallway away, the rhythm of heartbeats working blood through the veins of everyone around him. It’s intoxicating to have so much information, to have such knowledge at his very fingertips, available to him whether his remaining eye is open or shut; it’s sickening, to feel the pulse of it in place of the steady force of a human heartbeat, to know what price has been paid for his present survival. Fai remembers the pain in him, even if his preternatural-healing body has mended the damage done: his mind still recalls the hurt, the agony that jolted down his spine as tendons that should never be torn gave way, as his back arched and his lungs spasmed with a shriek of pain too raw for any kind of rationality to hold it back. There had been blood spilling like fire across his face and over his chest and aching in too many wounds to count; the afterimages of those linger, even if his body has fixed itself, cut the clearer into his mind for their absence from his body. And there’s the strength, building in his shoulders and shuddering in his fingertips, the possibility of violence barely restrained by all his own power even now. Fai sits in the dark that has become like so much dusk to him, and he hunches in over his knees, and he stares at the tremor of his hands and he wonders what he could do, who he could hurt, now as he is.

He hears the door open. It’s a soft sound, he thinks it might have been enough to be a challenge to hear as he used to be, as he was even a few days ago; but he’s no longer the man he was, no longer the _human_ he was, and he knows who it is coming even before the hand at the door urges the latch to give way. It’s in a thousand tells, the tang of oil on steel and the weight of iron-rich blood and the soft sound of opulent fabric drawing over itself; and it’s in the fact of the blood itself, the metallic-bitter tang of it that lingers on Fai’s tongue even now from those few drops that splattered across his lips and bound him to this existence in spite of his wishes.

Kurogane doesn’t speak. He steps into the room in silence, as quiet in the scuff of his tread against the floor as he was in easing the door free of its frame, and he lets it fall shut in his wake, even if the motion casts the room back into the darkness that must surely be a strain for his still-human eyes, even if Fai can still pick out the separate shadings of the other’s clothes without difficulty.

Fai doesn’t lift his head. He doesn’t want to see Kurogane, even if he can; he doesn’t want anything to do with Kurogane at all. Enough that he has the taste of heat on his tongue, that the fire of the other’s life has spilled over in his own veins to bind them together tighter than Fai ever expected, than Fai ever wanted; he’s not going to give up anything else of himself, any more of his identity to the hands of the hated figure in front of him. It _is_ hate Fai is feeling, the bitter edge of it is familiar at the back of his tongue and chill as ice at the inside of his chest; he holds it to him, presses it in near against himself, because it’s something he can count on, something he knows, and it’s safer than letting his heart go on beating with the ache that he can feel in the shadows of his inattention, the brittle agony of something more painful by far than what injuries he suffered at the hands of their erstwhile companion. Shaoran has betrayed them, has turned on them all and ripped Fai’s power free of his body by physical force; but it’s Kurogane’s actions, the heat of that blood so willing spilled to tie them irrevocably together, that Fai can’t find it in him to forgive. Selfishness he understands, self-preservation is something with which he is all too intimately aware; it’s the caring, the unhesitating sacrifice in Kurogane’s actions, that cuts Fai’s defenses down to the bone and leaves him helpless to do anything but shudder in the wake of the mortal wound dealt in his saving.

They are both very quiet for a long span of time. Kurogane doesn’t move from the door, doesn’t so much as lift a hand to bridge the gap between himself and Fai; and Fai doesn’t shift to make any indication of welcome or even of acknowledgment of the other’s presence. Even in the dark the pale of his hair must be visible, even if Kurogane lacks Fai’s own newly received ability to pick apart the tells of their breathing and the sound of their heartbeats from the whisper of the air around them; Fai takes what satisfaction he can find in denying Kurogane any more knowledge that what he already has, any greater intimacy than what they have already been forced into.

It’s Kurogane who speaks, finally. Fai is ready to let the whole of the night slide away into unspoken judgment and the chill of deliberate silence; the longer it stretches the worse it feels, and the cold feels like an embrace, the numb spreading out into him a comfort for the smouldering hurt that Kurogane’s self-sacrifice has done to him. But Kurogane is no more willing to stay silent than he was to hold himself at the distance he should have, it seems, and in the end it is Kurogane who takes an inhale deep and deliberate enough to give voice to his intention well before he speaks.

“Fai,” he says. His voice is low in consideration of the dark; as if Fai might be asleep, as if he isn’t now precisely what Kurogane made him, what Kurogane determined his life to be worth. Fai doesn’t answer, by word or movement, but Kurogane lifts his head and goes on speaking, offering words to what must be no more than shadows before him. “Will you eat?”

Fai presses his lips together while he tastes the possibility of speech on his tongue. His body is still aching, pained in some deep-down fashion distinct from anything he has ever had cause to feel before; it is a weakness spreading into him more than physical damage, a fading of life force so clear he imagines he can almost see it flickering under his skin like a candleflame fluttering in a high wind. His body demands sustenance, that much is unquestionable; but it’s not himself that Fai is looking at, not his own existence that is holding his attention. His gaze is fixed on Kurogane by the door, his gold-corrupted eye locked on the shadow of the other’s presence as if to pin the other man in place, and when Fai takes a rasping breath it’s with the taste of iron on his tongue, with the feel of steel lining the flex of his throat.

“You know better than I,” Fai says, with something of his old lightness in his tone, with a mockery of sincerity at his lips. “Will you make me, Kurogane?”

Kurogane flinches. He can’t see the expression on Fai’s face in the darkness of the room -- even his focus can’t overcome that basic physical limitation -- but Fai can see the grimace that tenses at the other’s features, that creases his forehead and pulls at the corners of his mouth as he rocks back on his heels. Fai stares at Kurogane by the doorway, wondering vaguely if the other will leave, if the words will carry force enough to finally drive away the unwanted caring that Kurogane brings with him, the affection that Fai never asked for, that Fai never set out to win; but Fai knows the taste of Kurogane’s blood, now, and there is no part of him that is surprised when the other steadies his footing and squares his shoulders into determination. His mouth is still drawn on a frown, his eyes dark even under the tension of his brows, but it’s certainty in his expression more than anger, and Fai knows absolutely that he won’t leave. When Kurogane moves it’s to reach down without looking away from Fai, even if he can surely see no more of the other than the pale of his hair; but Fai can see the shift of the other’s clothing, can see the flicker of muted moonlight catch off the edge of the knife Kurogane draws free from his belt. Kurogane doesn’t even look down to squint at what he’s doing as he lifts the blade to his other wrist and clenches his fingers tight against the quick drag of the edge over his skin; his gaze stays focused on Fai, locked on the other’s gaze as if he can actually make out Fai’s stare from the shadows. There’s a spill of heat into the air, the tang of blood and the sharp bite of iron flaring like a flame into Fai’s nose and clinging to the back of his tongue, and then Kurogane is extending his arm, holding his bleeding wrist out into the shadows of the room before him as he lets the dagger in his hand fall to his side. There’s no pain in his expression, no weight to his shoulders; he’s just standing there, unhesitating and unflinching at the door, offering his spilling blood for the use of a creature he can hardly even see in the shadows of the room.

Fai watches Kurogane’s face. He can smell the blood, can feel his throat aching for want of it, his tongue parching with thirst to which the drip of Kurogane’s wrist is the headiest of wines; but he doesn’t move, doesn’t shift to get to his feet and doesn’t speak to urge Kurogane in closer. He stays still, sitting at the edge of the bed watching the calm in Kurogane’s expression, the resignation behind his eyes, and he lets the ache of unfulfilled desire spread out into the whole of his body, knotting itself to a cramp in his stomach and a tremor across his shoulders and in the grip of his arms. Kurogane’s blood trickles over his wrist, collecting to heavy-dark droplets at his skin before falling to splash wet onto the floor, and Fai stays where he is, watching Kurogane unseen while the other’s offer goes untouched and untaken.

Maybe if he waits long enough, the ice frosting his skin will chase away the pain the caring in Kurogane’s heart has stabbed into his own.


	4. Accord

Kurogane keeps trying.

He can’t not. He knows Fai doesn’t want it of him, knows that Fai would have him stop if he could force an end; knows Fai would undo his own saving, if he could, would unravel the thread of his existence and leave it to fray to nothingness at the hand of the boy that was their companion, that is now maybe their enemy. Kurogane knows all of that, can see it clear in the cold judgment in Fai’s remaining eye when the other looks at him and can hear it in the deliberate syllables of his full name thrown like blows across the distance between them that is more insurmountable now that it ever has been before; and yet he keeps trying, the same way he offered himself as the tether for Fai’s continued existence, the same way he would make the same choice once again, a dozen times, a hundred times, if it could offer even a chance at saving the other’s life. Fai doesn’t want to be saved, Fai doesn’t want to be loved; but Kurogane’s heart was handed over long before he framed the words for it, long before the spill of his blood gave them a form too clear to be ignored, and he can’t stand aside while the man he loves lets himself fall out of life.

He doesn’t flinch from the hurt. His arm gains lines of scabs, clean cuts from the edge of his knife that bleed themselves to clots night after night with no more result than another black-dried stain against the floor of Fai’s bedroom, but Kurogane no more hesitates over each new one than he cringes from the ice that he knows will be waiting for him in Fai’s gaze, at Fai’s lips, in Fai’s stiff-shouldered rejection. It’s not rejection he fears any more than physical pain: what hurts more than anything else is seeing the strength bleed from Fai’s body, slumping in his shoulders and rasping in his breath and hunching him forward into surrender when he thinks no one is looking, when there is no one but Kurogane to see him. Kurogane watches the weakness in Fai’s fingertips, and the shadows building themselves to a burden under the dark of his lashes, and when Fai looks up to meet his gaze Kurogane holds that flat stare with one of his own, meeting the twist of self-deprecation at Fai’s mouth with a frown at his own lips. It’s a challenge, Kurogane thinks, his own determination set against Fai’s resignation, and if he doesn’t know which will win at least he knows he has no intention of giving up, even as every one of Fai’s struggling inhales tears his heart from his chest to crush him with the miserable fear of an unbearable loss.

It’s been bad today. Kurogane has been watching Fai’s descent for days, has seen the strength melting itself from the other’s body in time with the failing of his supernatural life force; but Fai’s been able to fool the others, has been clinging to a smile and laughter that rings false in Kurogane’s ears but buys at least compliance from their other companions. But today he didn’t even stir from the shadows of his bedroom, didn’t try to paper over the bitterness in his expression with forced cheer, and Kurogane can feel the weight of that like lead inside his chest. Whatever else he knows about Fai, whatever he may have learned or determined from the fragments of insight the other has dropped, the thing Kurogane is most sure of is the other’s determination to bury his own feelings as far behind a mask of flippant happiness as he can. The fact that he’s not so much as making the attempt speaks more clearly to his present state than Kurogane wants anyone but himself to be aware of.

He doesn’t linger any longer over breakfast than he has to. Kurogane knows himself to be a poor liar; the flair of invention comes hard to him, half-truths and distractions stumble to clumsy force at his lips. He can no more hide his concern than he can offer the uncertainty of comfort in answer to the fear in their companions’ faces, the alarm on Fai’s behalf that is so clear in the silence that falls over their usual morning routine. Kurogane scowls into his tea, and sets his jaw on quiet, and when the meal is concluded he pushes to his feet with all the force of intention under the motion. His thoughts are out of the room, pacing back down the hall to that shut door where he spends his nights, now, however uncomfortable drowsing upright may be, until it’s only the repetition of his name in a soft voice that drags his attention back to the present.

Sakura’s the one speaking. She’s sitting on the far side of the table from him, where she’s been staring down with her eyes haunted by ghosts Kurogane can all but see as clearly as he can imagine them; he hadn’t known she was aware of him at all until she spoke, but she’s looking up at him now, her head turned up so the illumination overhead catches her features to clarity. There’s a weight hanging itself over the youthful lines of her face, creasing a frown over a mouth that should know nothing but smiles and pulling shadows free from eyes that ought to be springtime-bright; but Fai’s not the only companion Kurogane has had on this journey, and he meets Sakura’s gaze with the level attention it deserves. She might be a child young enough for Kurogane’s heart to ache with sympathy when he thinks of the burdens placed on her; but they all have their own fears and histories, and Kurogane can no more take Sakura’s than she can bear his own. The best he can do is to meet her gaze without flinching to give her back the honesty her fears deserve; and so he does, gazing across the table at the girl without trying to force himself into the dismissive smile her age might otherwise elicit.

“Kurogane-san,” she says again, softly now that she has his attention. Kurogane can see her throat work, can see her eyes tighten as she tries to force back the strain from her expression. He can respect the effort she’s making, even if the end result is far from comforting. Sakura slides her hands off the table to fold them in her lap and takes a deep, careful breath. “Is...is Fai-san okay?”

Kurogane huffs an exhale. It’s pointless to lie, futile to even make the attempt; he knows the words will scatter on his tongue and choke his throat even if he tries to give them, even if there weren’t a focus in Sakura’s eyes that says she’ll see through any attempts at equivocation before they’re begun. He ducks his chin and shakes his head. “No.” There’s a moment of quiet ringing in the air over the table; then Kurogane lifts his gaze back to meet Sakura’s own. “But I’m not going to leave him alone.”

Sakura meets Kurogane’s gaze without flinching. Her eyes are bright with the wet of tears she isn’t quite shedding, but there’s no tremor at her mouth, and when she nods the motion is firm with certainty. “Good,” she says, and lets an exhale go. It sounds like relief even before she drops back against the support of the chair behind her. “Things will be okay if you’re with him.”

The words should be meaningless. If they were from someone else Kurogane thinks they would be no more than a desperate attempt at comfort, a clutching at reassurance that is no more helpful to the speaker than it is to the hearer. But Sakura sounds sure of herself, as if she really believes in the objective truth of the words she’s offering, and there’s something in her: the look in her eyes, maybe, or the resonance of her voice, that reminds Kurogane abruptly and unavoidably of the self-assurance of the princess he has spent so many years following. He stares at Sakura for a moment, taken aback by the moment of resemblance even as her words settle comfort over him as with the warmth of a blanket, and then she looks up at him, and smiles with nothing but sincerity behind it.

“Please take care of him,” she says, the words not quite an order but not simply a request. “Kurogane-san.”

Kurogane ducks his head into a nod. It’s an easy request to answer, when it’s so well-suited to his own intention, and he doesn’t linger in waiting for more before he finishes his motion of getting to his feet and turns towards the door to duck out of the room and return to his now-familiar hallway.

The door opens without protest. Kurogane can hardly hear the slide of friction as it moves across the floor; far more telling, he’s sure, is the glow of illumination that follows from the ambient light in the hallway to glow against the shadows that fill the room itself. Fai doesn’t voice any kind of protest to Kurogane’s entrance any more than he does to the light; in actual fact he doesn’t speak at all, barely even moves. The only motion he offers is to pull forward against the bed he’s lying on, his shoulders tensing barely-perceptibly as if to offer a defense against the illumination, and even that goes slack immediately, as if he lacks the strength to sustain even his instinctive response. Kurogane steps forward into the room, moving out of the doorway so he can ease it shut behind him and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. It takes a few minutes for his vision to clear, for him to pick out anything from his surroundings beyond the vague sense of the room and the pale of Fai’s hair, and it’s in the midst of this temporary blindness that the sound of an inhale comes as loud as a shout.

“You’re not going to give up.” Fai’s voice is clear against the quiet of the room: clear enough that Kurogane can hear each word like it’s cut from glass, can hear the brittle effort straining just under the words. When Fai takes an inhale he sounds like he’s fighting it free of the air to fill the space in his chest. “Are you?”

Kurogane stares into the darkness. He can’t see the details of Fai’s position against the bed -- his vision hasn’t yet adjusted enough -- but he can see the glow of the other’s hair, the pale shade of it radiant as moonlight against the shadows around them. He fixes his gaze on that point of light as he shakes his head, offering up a silent answer even before he takes a breath to speak aloud. “No.”

There’s a long moment of quiet. Tension stretches itself out between them, languid with familiarity as it occupies the space between Kurogane’s heartbeats, between the sound of Fai’s inhales. Kurogane’s eyes adjust, filtering details from the shadows to form the outline of Fai’s body curled over the sheets of the bed, his knees angled towards the wall and his head tipped down against the pillow. Kurogane can see the pale of Fai’s bare skin past the sleeve of his clothes, can see the shift of tension in fingers tightening down against the sheets beneath him; and he can see Fai’s motion, the angle of his shoulders tipping back as he turns against the blankets even as he takes a breath to speak.

“Come here, Kurogane.”

The name is as painful to hear now as it was that first time, the wall it imposes between them as insurmountable; but Kurogane has heard it every night since then, and at least the hurt is familiar, if nothing else. He takes a step forward from the wall, crossing into the space of the bedroom that he’s never moved over before, and against the bed Fai braces a hand against the mattress to lever himself up. It’s a struggling motion, Kurogane can see the effort in the slow action as clearly as he can hear it in the hiss of Fai’s breathing, but he doesn’t reach out to offer a hand to help, doesn’t even raise his fingers to ghost against the tangle of Fai’s pale hair. He just stands still at the edge of the bed, watching Fai struggle himself to upright with more effort than even Kurogane had expected it would take. Fai pauses for a moment once he’s sitting up, his head ducked forward so his hair falls in front of his face into a curtain; Kurogane listens to the sound of his breathing dragging in his chest, watches tension fight back tremors across Fai’s shoulders. Then Fai’s arms strain, his head comes up, and when he moves it’s to turn away from the wall, twisting against the sheets under him as he shifts to face Kurogane. He shakes his hair back from his face, tipping his chin up into an angle of regal expectation, and when Kurogane looks down to meet his gaze he doesn’t need words to grant form to the demand in Fai’s expression.

He doesn’t look away as he reaches for the knife tied into place just behind his hip. This motion is simple, made familiar by repetition; Kurogane doesn’t need to see to draw the blade any more than he has to think to lift his left arm up in front of himself. He watches Fai as he scores the skin at the inside of his wrist with the blade, tearing the ache of familiar hurt across his arm, but Fai doesn’t duck his head, doesn’t so much as dip his lashes in answer to the motion. He just stares up at Kurogane, meeting the other’s gaze with equivalent force even with a single eye to Kurogane’s pair; Kurogane feels himself locked in place by that gaze, something between consideration and judgment all but blazing up at him. He lets the knife lower to his side, lifts his arm out into an offer; and Fai lifts a hand without looking to catch and close his fingers hard around Kurogane’s arm.

His grip is tighter than Kurogane expected, as if all the remaining strength in his body is fixed into the line of his fingers and the tendons of his wrist, his hold pinning Kurogane’s arm to perfect steadiness as Fai goes on gazing up into the other’s eyes. Kurogane stares back, matching Fai’s haughty consideration without flinching; his wrist aches as blood collects against the narrow cut to drip along his skin in danger of falling. Fai considers Kurogane, his expression unreadable in the dim lighting, and then his lashes dip over his eye, his head tips into dismissal more than surrender, and he ducks his head in over Kurogane’s bleeding arm with as much casual grace as if he’s done this a hundred, a thousand times before. Fai’s lips part, his mouth opens, and then his tongue is catching at Kurogane’s wrist, the heat of it sliding up to lap at the trickle of spilled blood and save it from soaking into the give of the sheets across the bed. Kurogane’s fingers shift in spite of himself, flexing like he’s trying to close his grip on something as substanceless as the air, and then Fai’s mouth presses flush against the cut at his wrist, and when Fai’s throat works Kurogane’s heartrate speeds in perfect time to answer the demand.

They don’t speak at all. Fai’s lashes are dipped over his remaining eye, and from the angle Kurogane is at he can’t see much of the other’s face but the dark of the eyepatch cutting across it; but Fai’s grip at his wrist is unflinching, and Kurogane doesn’t make any attempt to draw away. He stands perfectly still, his gaze lingering on Fai’s lips pressing to his skin, his heart racing with the heat of contact glowing between them as Fai’s skin warms to a match of his own, as the offering of his blood grants strength to Fai’s limbs; and finally Kurogane lifts his gaze, and fixes his attention on the wall, and stares deliberately at nothing as a safer choice than letting his focus linger on the temptation of Fai so intimately close before him.

It doesn’t make a difference. Even with his eyes shut, Kurogane thinks he would feel the ache of contact underlining every beat of his heart to make an offering of the rhythm of his pulse.


	5. Waiting

Fai has never known fear like what he feels in Nihon Country.

There is no time to process, no time to make sense of the insanity that has just happened, of the sacrifice just made. The transfer happens at once, like being pulled out of himself, dragged from one existence through the pressure of barriers never meant to be breached, but Fai feels every impossible moment as an infinity measured in the spill of Kurogane’s blood from his self-inflicted wound, in the patter of heartbeats drawing from a too-short store. He’s shaking when they land, his hands trembling even as he clutches Kurogane to him, so when the shouting strangers around them pull at the dead weight of the other’s body Fai’s unraveled power can’t maintain his grip enough to keep Kurogane with him.

He doesn’t remember screaming. He must have, must have been shouting demands and pleas alike at those surrounding them, at Kurogane’s unresponsive features, at the universe that could have let something like this happen, that could offer him what he never dared let himself hope for and snatch it from him in the same breath, but all he really remembers is the terror, the bone-deep, instinctive fear that gripped him in a vise as if dragging his feet down into an endless, unmeasured fall. Fai has known grief before, has learned to live his whole existence around the pain of his own fate-cursed life; he has known pain that he could hardly imagine before it happened, in the loss of the other half of him, in the tearing loose of the magic power that almost killed him, in the absolute self-loathing that seized him with the effect of vampiric blood on his body. This is none of that, not the pain and not the grief and not even the anger, sometimes, that sparks in him on his blackest nights: this is terror, crippling him until he can’t stand upright, until he can do no more than clutch with strengthless fingers at the edge of the pallet bearing Kurogane away from him. There’s blood all over his clothes, chilling cold and clammy against his skin, and all Fai can do is watch Kurogane be carried away and feel his world crumbling apart beneath him to drop him into the endless void of a loss he never imagined he could feel.

The touch was startling, when it came: gentle instead of forceful, warm instead of the cold that seems to have gripped itself around the very beat of Fai’s heart, as if his horror could still his pulse to fail in time with the slowing rhythm of Kurogane’s. Fai hadn’t intended to turn, even though there was no longer anything to see but the closed doors through which Kurogane had been borne; but that contact at his face had urged, and he had moved, surrendering to the motherly comfort of the contact with an instinct that he has never had occasion to draw on before. The girl is young, younger in appearance than Fai himself although burdened with the elegant finery that speaks to someone of the highest of ranks; but it’s not her elaborate clothes that draw Fai’s attention, not when she’s looking down at him with eyes as dark and calm as the comforting embrace of the sleep-laden hours of night.

“Don’t worry,” she says. Fai stares up at her, his throat constricted on his fear and his remaining eye swimming with tears, but she doesn’t flinch away from his terror, doesn’t duck out of the sincerity her gaze is promising as surely as her voice. Her palm presses to his face, offering the comfort of human contact at the same time she holds his gaze with a certainty so absolute it stifles even the wail of horror in Fai’s throat. “Kurogane will not die.”

There’s no sense of magic, no thrum of the resonance that Fai knows so well he can sense it without so much as thinking. There is no proof that the girl’s words are true, no way to verify the reality of her statement; and yet something in Fai gives way all the same, some fast-tightening knot in his chest loosens to let him gasp over a breath, to fill his lungs with air as if he hasn’t breathed since their landing even as his eye overflows with a fresh wave of emotion. His vision blurs out of his grasp, his chest catches onto sobs of relief instead of the awful, crushing force of fear, and when he ducks his head away from the warmth of that hand it’s to cry helplessly over the bloodstained curl of his fingers gone slack in his lap.

They are all brought into the palace. The grounds are beautiful, Fai can see that much from what he glimpses in the slower progress the remnants of their group make after Kurogane has been carried away for whatever treatment can be offered him, but his thoughts are all within instead of without, and even when he’s shown to a chamber of his own and offered a bath and a change of clothes to replace those soaked through with blood spilled from his own body and Kurogane’s together he can find no more strength in him than to duck his head into a nod of silent acquiescence. His body moves itself, slow and struggling with the effort but well enough to carry him through the process of washing his hair and body and wrapping himself in the loose fall of the clothing that is laid out for him alongside a meal he doesn’t even try to touch. His body is aching, even his vampiric strength run dry on the lengths to which he’s pushed it, but he leaves the bed made up in the corner as untouched as his meal and goes out into the hallway instead. Everything is quiet, voices soft and muffled by the thin walls surrounding them and the presence of others obscured into nothing more than shadows cast against the delicate translucence of the barriers, but Fai can feel the ache at the inside of his chest urging him to motion like the sea is urged by the moon, and what strength he has left to him is enough to draw his footsteps scuffing softly down the hall and around the corners standing between him and Kurogane.

He doesn’t go inside. There are voice within, murmurs of conversation that speak to a half-dozen attendants hovering over what must be a delicate process, and Fai has nothing to offer to aid in this, nothing he can give in exchange for the life he needs more than he needs his own. He would, he thinks, if given the chance, if offered the choice: but Kurogane made the choice for them both, splashing his blood across the pattern of magic hanging in the air to free Fai from the impenetrable wall it formed in exchange for his own arm, and there is nothing left for Fai to do now. All he has left to offer is himself, for what value his ruined life still holds; and he cannot throw that twice-saved gift aside, not when Kurogane has paid for its keeping with his blood and body and freedom. Fai stands outside Kurogane’s room, listening to the voices whisper inside, feeling his heart beating in his chest and listening to the echo of that same rhythm weak but steady on the other side of the door; and finally he turns his back to the wall, and shuts his eye to block out the world, and lets himself slide down the support to sit in the heavy weight of his own patience for Kurogane to come back to him.

Fai doesn’t know how long it takes. He long since lost a stable grasp of time; with no one to tell the passage of hours and days for him he slides into a fugue, losing himself to the endless pattern of life struggling itself into existence in the space between his position outside the door and Kurogane within. Sometimes others pass, slipping past him on near-silent feet or pausing at the nearest turning to hesitate over seeing him; but they never tell him to go, never speak to rouse him, and Fai lets them flicker past his awareness as easily as he looses his grasp on the trappings of temporality. His focus is fixed on a single point, on a single foolish promise: _Kurogane will not die_ , and so he stays where he is, and he marvels at the inexplicable, impossible strength of faith that has pressed itself into him in the shape of those words.

It’s the same voice that finally stirs him back to the present, in the end. Fai has thought over those words, has imagined the comfort of that touch like a lifeline to tether him to reality while Kurogane is coaxed back to Fai’s side; when it finally comes it feels like a dream, like a fantasy formed of memory and aching hope at once that brings weight against his hair and ghosting at his cheek. Fai frowns at the contact, wondering at the clarity of his own imaginings, but then:

“Fai,” the girl says, and Fai opens his eye to look up. The girl -- the princess, as she must be -- is standing over him, tipped forward to touch against his hair. Her clothes are as elaborate as they were before, if of a different shade and design, but this time she greets Fai with a smile with far more clarity than what she had for him upon their landing. Fai blinks up at her, his thoughts struggling to fit themselves back into the present, to make sense of this interruption to his timeless waiting, and the princess draws her touch against his cheek like she’s soothing away a bad dream as she smiles at him. “It’s nearly time.”

Fai takes a breath and lets it out slowly. There’s a relief to the words, even if he all but knew what they would be, but even as he hears them his heart flutters on disbelief, as hope too long-kept struggles to make sense of the freedom it is now granted. He tips his head to the side to look towards the doors drawn carefully shut over their contents. “He’s awake?”

The princess shakes her head. “Not yet,” she says, and Fai’s too-much hope eases back, shifting into the bearable pressure of anticipation instead of impossible gratification. “It won’t be long now.” She sets her hand atop his head, acting more with the weight of the wisdom behind her eyes than the youth in her features. “You’ll need to get dressed.”

Fai doesn’t think to protest. It seems strange that he would give up his position so readily just for the asking, after clinging to it with white-knuckled determination for what feels like a lifetime of waiting; but the princess’s words promise a change, and it seems right, somehow, that he should be the first step of that. He finds himself on his feet, led away down one of those silent hallways by an attendant who shows him to a room with a bath still so hot that it’s throwing off clouds of steam hazy with the sweet of the perfume that’s been laced into the water. Fai sheds the simple clothes he was gifted upon his arrival and lowers the knotted-in aches of unmoving muscles into the steam of the tub; by the time he’s emerging his thoughts are dizzy with the heat, and his limbs are loose and glowing with comfort, and his clothes have been taken away to be replaced with luxuriously soft fabric and a pair of attendants to fit the garment around Fai’s shoulders and tie it into place with the dark-patterned sash they have with them. Fai lets them work unobstructed; he lacks the knowledge to dress himself properly in the clothes of this realm, and their movements are graceful in their efficiency as they wrap him in the clothing with as much care as if he’s a gift being prepared for offering to a king. They’re ready to tie his hair back too, to smooth the waves into careful alignment and grant his expression the same elegance his clothing is forming to his body, but Fai shakes his head and refuses the various accessories and ties they have to offer. The only thing he takes is a brush, to draw the tangles free of the locks hanging across his shoulders, and then a plain black ribbon to catch the longer waves together at the back of his neck. The attendants watch him work in silence, patient even in his rejection of their help; one hands over his eyepatch before he asks for it, not even trying to take over the process of tying it into place around his hair. Fai does that, keeping his head ducked forward so the weight of his hair curtains his expression as thoroughly as the deliberate set of his mouth; it’s only once the now-familiar pressure is in place that he takes a breath and lifts his head to look into the mirror.

His appearance is striking. The fabric draped around his shoulders and cinched close at his waist makes him look tall and slim at once, smoothing out the natural angles of his body into a long curve that shows off the dark inner lining of the garment around him and the details of the crescent moons embroidered at each shoulder. The clothing fits as if made for him; Fai suspects it has been, sometime during the endless span he has spent waiting for Kurogane’s recovery, but the result looks almost offhand, as if a coincidence rather than the intent it must have been. With the details of the clothing Fai’s hair looks almost unkempt, as if a mistake or an impossible oversight; but the weight of it falls over his face the way he wanted it to, the shadow of it disguising his features when he ducks his head forward. It’s only when he lifts his chin that the light can catch at the glow of his eye and bring out the sudden, shocking color of the blue from behind the pale weight of his hair as if the focus of Fai’s attention is a physical blow. Fai gazes at himself for a moment, feeling satisfaction and anticipation humming through the distant weight of his body; and then he nods, and he turns back towards his attendants to let them lead him back out of the room.

The princess is waiting when they arrive. She is standing right where Fai left her, looking as pristine and patient as if she hasn’t moved at all since he was drawn away; when she looks up at him the dark of her gaze takes in everything at once, from the knot of his sash to the fall of the ribbon at his hair to the set of his mouth. She gazes at him a long while, long enough that Fai feels stripped to skin, to bone, to the spiderwebbed cracks over the soul that has been saved so many times by so many sacrifices; and then she ducks her head, the gesture more acknowledgment than anything else.

“I will call you,” she says calmly, and she turns to step through the door one of the attendants slides open for her. Fai doesn’t have time to see anything on the other side, even if he were trying, before the door slides shut and leaves him standing to wait in the familiar darkness of the hallway.

He can’t hear anything for the first few minutes. He wonders, at first, if perhaps the princess is speaking in an impossibly soft voice, so gentle it won’t carry even to the hallway so nearby; but then there’s a gasp, and a voice dragging rough on tension and fear even as it offers a question, and Fai’s chest tightens like a fist has closed around it at just the sound of Kurogane’s voice on the other side of that door. His throat knots, his eye burns, and for a moment all he can do is stare at the unformed shadows on the door before him and feel everything too keenly to be borne. He’s grateful for the delay, grateful for the need for patience; better to be here, silent and unobserved in the hallway, while the grate of Kurogane’s voice falls like rain on the parched desert of Fai’s existence and his good eye overflows with tears as if to offer answering moisture of their own.

Fai can’t hear what the princess and Kurogane are speaking of. The princess’s voice is so soft he can barely pick it out at all; even the weight of Kurogane’s isn’t clear enough for him to draw free details beyond the tenor of his emotion, the drag of panic or the rumble of suspicion. It reminds him of Shura, when their words were stripped of their coherence and left to carry no more meaning than what could be borne on tone alone; it reminds him of dark-lit rooms, of Kurogane’s eyes fixed on him and Kurogane’s mouth set on certainty, when he spoke whole novels of meaning with no more than the angle of his shoulders and the tension of his fingers. Fai can see the shift of memory in the shadows against the door before him, can carry himself back in time to those first nights as distant now as if from another life, to the crease at Kurogane’s forehead and the set of his lips, the tension that Fai took as rejection when it was the farthest thing from it. Fai thinks he could understand Kurogane without saying a word, now, thinks perhaps the borrowed blood in his veins itself would resonate to carry all the things that Kurogane hasn’t said, that Kurogane has expressed in a thousand means beyond speech; all the things that Fai hasn’t answered, has left untaken, unacknowledged. Fai’s chest tightens, his breathing catches; and he shuts his eye, and he takes a deep breath, and when he lets it out he lets the strain go too. His throat eases, his tears cease, and he lifts his head up towards the ceiling overhead, and he waits for his summons.

It comes at last, framed by the sound of that girlish voice, pitched louder now so the words will carry even through the barrier of the thin wall between them. “ _Sorry to have kept you waiting_ ” and Fai lowers his head and opens his eye, fixing his gaze back on the door before him as his heart pounds a steady drumbeat of anticipation. “ _Please step inside.”_

Fai takes a breath, and he ducks his head, and he reaches out to slide the door before him open and step into the light at last, where Kurogane is waiting for him.


	6. Heartfelt

Kurogane has never seen anything in all his life as beautiful as Fai standing in the doorway to his room. The other man is framed in the entrance, standing in the structure of the life Kurogane has always known, within the boundary of the world that Kurogane has always lived in alone, until now; the weight of his winter coat is gone, stripped away to be replaced with fabric as elegant as a bride’s that clings to his body with as much tenderness as a lover’s touch. His hair is falling loose all over his face, hiding both the blue of his eye and the dark of his eyepatch with equal care; all Kurogane can see of the other’s expression is the tension at his mouth, the press of his lips tight against each other as if he’s holding back the weight of words through physical effort.

He doesn’t hesitate in the doorway. No sooner has Kurogane laid eyes on him than Fai is stepping forward, moving across the floor with steps as soft as if he was born to this, as if he’s spent the whole of his life pacing down narrow corridors and past shadow-thin doors. Kurogane wonders if he’ll stop halfway, if he won’t bring himself up against that invisible wall that lingered after the last time Kurogane gave of himself to save Fai’s existence; but Fai steps over the barrier like it’s not even there, crossing the whole distance from the door until he’s standing at the edge of Kurogane’s bed. It’s only there that he stops, his steps drawing short to bring him to a halt just alongside Kurogane before him.

Kurogane looks up at Fai. He still can’t see the other’s expression; all he can make of it is the curl of his hands at his sides, the tremor of tension running against his arms, that near-painful set of his mouth under the weight of his hair. But he looks up anyway, lifting his face into the light to gaze up at Fai’s ducked-down head, because this isn’t the first time Kurogane has made this choice, and he’s not about to stop now.

He has to swallow before he can find voice for himself, has to clear his throat before he can gain the breath enough to speak. “Hey.”

Fai doesn’t answer. He just stands still at Kurogane’s bedside, his arms heavy at his sides and his head ducked down to consider the other before him. Kurogane can’t see his eye but he can feel Fai’s focus on him, can feel it as certainly as a touch, and when he gazes up it’s to meet that same attention unflinchingly, without trying to struggle for any kind of regret or to offer an apology he doesn’t feel. He can’t even think of the loss of his arm, not with the reward for his sacrifice so immediately in front of him; all he can do is look, and look, and feel the gratitude for this boon -- for Fai, still here, still with him, still alive -- ache through him far more sharply than his carefully bandaged wounds could ever manage.

Kurogane doesn’t see the blow coming. It comes too quickly, he thinks, it’s too abrupt and unexpected for him to brace for it; but even then he should be able to see the strain in Fai’s hand, should have seen the flex at Fai’s wrist. But he’s looking up, the princess and his injury and everything else around him forgotten for his focus on the tumble of Fai’s hair and the satisfaction of being able to see him again, of having Fai here in reality at his side, and so the impact lands solidly against the side of his head without him having any chance at all to duck away or cringe from the blow. He goes over at once, knocked sideways onto his left side without any ability to even try to catch himself; it’s only the layers of pillows and blankets next to him that soften the landing out of pain, and even then he’s left clutching at the side of his head where a knot is already forming from the blow that’s just landed against him. He looks up, his eyes wide with shock more than with pain, and sees Fai standing over him, his hand still raised in a fist as he looks down at Kurogane sprawling over the sheets.

“This is payback,” he says, and the light catches under the wave of his hair to illuminate the color of his eye, to glow against the curve of the smile at his lips. There’s damp at his lashes, the traces of tears marked out into fading wet across his cheek and at the corner of his eye, but his smile is the brightest Kurogane has ever seen from him, spreading across his face and glowing like sunlight against the blue-sky bright of his eye. Fai looks down at Kurogane before him, and he smiles all over his face, and he meets Kurogane’s gaze without flinching away at all. “Kuro-sama.”

The nickname rings in the air between them like the sound of a bell, like the whisper of a vow on Fai’s lips. Kurogane’s heart stutters, his breath catches; and then he’s smiling, a grin pulling free to spread across his face. He doesn’t think about the ache at his head, doesn’t think about the dull hurt of the injury of his lost arm; he just meets Fai’s gaze, and growls over something like amusement from the pressure in his chest.

“You bastard,” Kurogane says, “I’ll beat you up!” Fai’s smile doesn’t flicker at this -- if anything it goes wider -- and he doesn’t resist when Kurogane shoves awkwardly against the soft under him to push himself to upright. His hand falls to his side as Kurogane reaches up for him, as he forms a fist against the elegant weight of the clothing draping Fai to such austere beauty, and when Kurogane pulls Fai comes forward at once, toppling in to kneel at the edge of Kurogane’s bed without the least sign of hesitation. Kurogane can see the whole of his expression, now, as the light catches bright against the damp at Fai’s lashes and his mouth drags sharply over the edge of relief under that teasing smile, and he doesn’t look away even as the rustle of motion from behind him says Princess Tomoyo is moving away and out of the room. Fai doesn’t look to watch her motion either; his gaze is fixed entirely on Kurogane’s face, his attention trailing across the other’s features with as much focus as if it’s his fingers he’s pressing to Kurogane’s skin, as if he’s relearning the familiar lines of the other’s body with his sight in place of touch. Kurogane can smell the sweet of violets on Fai’s skin, the imprint of some luxurious bath or of flowers pressed into the folds of the clothing he’s wearing; his fingers uncurl themselves from the front of the fabric to trail up instead, to press into the dark inside layer of the cloth and trace it up and around to the curl of Fai’s hair against his collar, to the rhythm of Fai’s pulse thudding against the side of his neck.

“Fai,” Kurogane says, offering up the simplicity of that one sound before his throat closes and emotion steals his coherency. Fai’s lashes flutter, the blue of his eye shadowed by the motion, but he doesn’t press his lips together, and Kurogane can hear the shudder on the exhale the other lets go from his chest.

“I know,” Fai says. His hands come up, his fingers slide into Kurogane’s hair, caressing the pattern of affection over the other even as his hands tighten as if to hold Kurogane to him by force, and Kurogane’s lashes dip as his throat sets free a groan as dark as smoke, as hot as blood. Fai’s mouth shifts in Kurogane’s periphery, another one of those startled smiles fluttering across his expression like wings before he ducks in against the other’s shoulder.

“I know,” he says. His breath is hot against Kurogane’s skin, it spills like water over the dip of the other’s collarbone. “I love you too, Kuro-chan.” His mouth presses to Kurogane’s shoulder, urging the weight of the words to settle into the other’s skin, and Kurogane shuts his eyes and lets Fai kiss against him, at his shoulder, along his neck, delicate against the rhythm of his heartbeat and gently in the space just behind his ear. Fai kisses Kurogane everywhere he can reach, at the dark of his hairline and the flex of his shoulder and the line of his jaw; and then Kurogane turns his head, and Fai kisses his mouth, easing into the contact with as much grace as he ever showed in Shura, as unhesitatingly as if he’s coming home. Kurogane lingers in the friction of it, the curve of Fai’s lips, the heat of his breathing, the suggestion of his mouth; and then Fai draws back to take a breath, and Kurogane pulls to urge them both back down to the bed beneath him. Fai follows him down, utterly compliant to the urging of Kurogane’s arm around him, and as they land at the sheets Kurogane urges his hand up to catch at the curl of Fai’s ponytail and hold the other steady against the fit of his mouth. Fai parts his lips at once to the demand of Kurogane’s mouth, his fingers tightening into the other’s hair as if he means to hold them together, and Kurogane winds his fingers into Fai’s hair and reaches out to catch the taste of love on Fai’s tongue against his own.


	7. Known

Fai can tell Kurogane’s in pain.

He doesn’t need to wait to be told. The other man is good at setting his jaw, at tensing his shoulders and bracing his fists and holding his hurt back to no more of a giveaway than the frown at his lips; but Fai has spent long months with him, has learned every shading of Kurogane’s existence as thoroughly as Kurogane as learned his, and he knows how to parse that pallor under the other’s tanned cheeks, the flex of that muscle at the back of his jaw, that deliberate stiffness at his shoulders. He doesn’t need the giveaway of his own heightened senses, the tang of blood heavy in the air like wine to his changed form; he thinks he would know without any of that, with no more than the attention he has molded to the other’s existence over the worlds and time they have passed through together.

Fai doesn’t ask for permission to follow Kurogane into the bedroom. He wouldn’t anyway -- he hasn’t since Shura, and he’s not likely to begin now -- but there’s that tension in Kurogane’s shoulders to guide him this time, to cut a wave through the ocean of their existence that Fai can trail like a leaf swept up in its wake. He steps carefully, slipping in through the door as it closes without pushing it wider, and when he reaches out to touch his fingers to the weight of it’s only to urge it back an extra inch and settle the latch in place the faster.

Kurogane barely glances at him. The light catches at the color of his eyes to cast them to inscrutable darkness as he looks at Fai standing by the doorway, but it’s not his eyes that tell the story for him any more than the drag of strain at the corners of his mouth speaks to true anger. Fai steps forward from his position at the door as quickly as Kurogane turns to duck his head into shadow again, striding forward to cross the distance at the same time he lifts his hands so by the time he’s within reach of the other his fingers are already finding out the fall of Kurogane’s cloak to follow the weight around to work against the tie holding the shadow close to the other’s body.

Kurogane gusts an exhale without turning around. “Did you smell the blood?”

Fai slides the tie loose and pulls the cloak back off Kurogane’s shoulders. “I knew before that,” he says, speaking softly so his voice won’t carry beyond the weight of the shut door granting them some measure of privacy. “It’s all over your face, Kuro-tan.”

Kurogane grimaces. “I hope not,” he says. Fai folds the cloak and turns to the side to drape it over the back of a chair; Kurogane stays where he is, standing still as if Fai’s touch has made a statue of him while he waits for the other to come back. “I don’t need to worry the others.”

Fai’s mouth catches at the beginnings of a wry smile as he smoothes the cloak down against the chair. “Don’t you?” he asks, the question light enough to be rhetorical before he turns to return to where Kurogane is standing. Kurogane watches him approach, his head ducked down and his gaze dark enough to be almost a glare, but Fai comes in all the same, closing the distance to stand so close in front of Kurogane that there’s almost not space for him to lift his hands to the fastenings keeping the other’s shirt on.

“They are very perceptive themselves,” Fai says, still with that careful lightness on the words as he unfastens ties to free the clothing over Kurogane’s chest. The bite of blood is clear in the air, now, heavy enough that he thinks anyone would be able to feel it even without a vampiric taste for the same. “They notice a great many things.” He slides his palms down Kurogane’s sides, so gentle in the contact that the fabric barely rustles before he’s curling his fingers in just over the top of the other’s pants so he can ease the cloth up and free. “But I think I’m the only one who knows for sure.”

Kurogane breathes an exhale. It would be a laugh with more force behind it; it just sounds heavy as it falls. “I know better than to hide it from you,” he says. He lifts his right hand from his side; his fingers press to Fai’s cheek, his thumb dips to the corner of Fai’s mouth. “Don’t smile like that.”

Fai lets his lips soften to a flat line under the weight of Kurogane’s touch. “I’m not forcing it.”

“I know,” Kurogane says, and lets his hand drop. “It’s still not real.”

Fai’s shoulder lifts in a shrug of admission but he doesn’t comment. He tugs Kurogane’s shirt free of the other’s pants instead, wrapping his fingers in against the weight of it as he draws it up. “Lift your arm.”

Kurogane does. It’s hard to maneuver the shirt free of his right arm and over his head with his left heavy and unmoving at his side, but Fai goes slow, careful to work the weight loose with as little jostling of the burden of metal as he can manage. The neckline catches against Kurogane’s hair, tangling with the bright of the band he keeps tied across his forehead, but Fai tugs it free with careful attention, patient instead of frantic as he gets the fabric loose. It’s only after he has Kurogane’s shirt caught safely in his grip that he moves to ease it down and off the line of metal joined close to skin at the top of the other’s left arm.

It’s not a smooth connection. The smell of blood surges high as Fai works the cloth free of the clinging damp that has soaked into it; it’s enough to make his mouth water with that strange, unavoidable desire that has been a constant part of his life since Tokyo. The line between metal and skin is raw, swollen and torn at the edges and oozing blood as thick and dark as if it’s as much steel as liquid. Fai has to move slowly to draw the shirt free of half-clotted blood, moving gently to keep from wrenching scabs open as he goes, but even then he can hear the rasp of Kurogane’s breathing coming harder on the pain, even with the lightest touch Fai can bring to bear.

Fai grimaces and takes a breath. “I’m--”

“Don’t apologize,” Kurogane says. The words come fast, even forced past gritted teeth as they are; the strength of them is enough to pull Fai’s attention up from what he’s doing to flicker to the other’s face. Kurogane’s mouth is still set, his face still pale with a hurt that must be intense, to show so clearly on his features, but his eyes are on Fai, the dark weight of them fixed unflinchingly on the other’s face. The metal of his artificial shoulder flexes, pulled into stiff movement by the reflexive action of muscle as if to imitate the strain that Fai has seen in him before, that speaks to the intricacies of Kurogane’s heart better than the fixed expression on his face. “I don’t regret any of it.”

Fai holds Kurogane’s gaze for a long moment. There’s no tension between them, no uncertainty; they’re long past that, the fragments scattered like dust in their wake on the journey they have taken together. It’s just that there’s a comfort to Kurogane’s gaze, a satisfaction to meeting each other’s attention with none of the forced smiles and unvoiced words that so shadowed the early days: a relief to being seen as well as seeing, to feeling a lifetime of communication in the span of a heartbeat, in the flutter of lashes.

“I know,” Fai says, finally, acknowledgment for a truth he knows as well as he knows anything, and he ducks his head to urge Kurogane’s shirt the rest of the way off his arm. “No more than I do.” The shirt goes the way of the cloak, carefully folded to keep the wet of soaked-in blood at the inside of the fabric, and then Fai turns back, shaking his hair from his face and lifting his chin to look up at Kurogane as he steps forward. His hands land at Kurogane’s hips, his fingers spread to gentle care against the flex of tanned skin as if to ground himself against the resistance of the other’s body.

“Step back, please” and Fai pushes, and Kurogane moves, backing up in immediate response to the weight of the other’s touch without hesitating to so much as look back over his shoulder. The room is small enough to make an obstacle of even the few pieces of furniture within it but Kurogane doesn’t look to see where he’s going; he just watches Fai, his eyes fixed full on the other as he paces backwards across the floor. Fai meets the other’s eyes without blinking, gazing up at Kurogane with the supernatural gold of his eye glowing in the dim light, until they come up to the goal he was steering them towards. He’s doesn’t have to put words to his intent here: all he does is tip in, leaning forward to come into the little space left between himself and Kurogane, and Kurogane falls backwards to let himself drop and sit at the edge of the bed behind him.

Fai smiles as he angles in over Kurogane to lay claim to the advantage of height the other’s movement grants him. Kurogane lifts his head up, angling back so he can keep watching Fai tipping in over him, and Fai takes a breath and ducks in to offer the reward of a kiss fitting to heat against the other’s mouth. The contact is gentle, as easy as the fit of his hands at Kurogane’s hips, as graceful as the movement the other took in backing up across the distance of the room; Fai can see Kurogane’s lashes dip down as his mouth softens under Fai’s, can feel the unvoiced groan of heat in the very back of the other’s throat at the contact. Fai lifts his hands from Kurogane’s skin to slide his fingers up into the soft-short of dark hair, to fit his touch in and under the band of crimson wrapped around the other’s head, and as Kurogane’s right hand comes up to weight against Fai’s waist Fai lets his eye shut too to give himself up to the warmth of Kurogane’s mouth under his for long, lingering seconds.

He doesn’t pull away. The headband slides free, falling from Fai’s fingers to land unattended at the bed behind Kurogane; Kurogane’s fingers tighten against Fai’s hip, holding against the other with a force as if he intends to keep him here even if he has to do it one-handed. But Fai has no interest in retreating or in keeping his distance from the man before him; he’s rocking in instead, curving his shoulders and tipping forward and sliding his touch in to cradle the back of Kurogane’s neck as he tastes against the inside of the other’s mouth, as he settles his knee against the outside of Kurogane’s angled-open legs. He rocks down with fluid grace, letting the glow of instinct steer his motions in to pour himself against the support of Kurogane’s lap beneath his, and even when his lips come free of Kurogane’s it’s only to replace them against the heat of the other’s skin, to kiss at the tension of his jaw and the scratch of stubble too short to be seen but clear to the sensitive give of Fai’s mouth. He lingers over the motion as he trails a path down Kurogane’s neck, along the offer of his upraised chin and to the murmur of his heart beating in the line of his throat, staying there long enough that he can feel the rhythm speeding on the stirring of heat Fai can feel in his own veins and in the tension of Kurogane’s body beneath his own. Fai marks a path down Kurogane’s neck, pressing the imprint of his lips to the straining tension of pain still cording the tendons under the other’s skin and flexing painful along the line of his shoulderblades, until finally he comes to the angry red swelling that marks out the join between metal and flesh along the top of Kurogane’s left shoulder.

Fai is gentle with the contact here. There’s blood across Kurogane’s skin, spread to pale pink farther from the protesting connection and deep scarlet against the torn skin itself, where slow-spilling red has been speaking to the other’s pain for the last hours. Fai can smell the iron in the air, the bite of it so strong it’s hard to distinguish smell and taste for a moment; and then he presses his lips into a delicate kiss against the injury, and the taste eclipses everything else for a moment as his mouth fills with the taste of Kurogane’s blood. Fai’s lashes dip, his throat flexes with the deep-down, instinctive want that always comes with this taste, now, and when he presses in closer it’s to open his mouth and to touch his tongue with deliberate care against the slow seep of blood against the line of Kurogane’s metal arm and the natural strength in his shoulder.

He tastes like metal. It’s in his blood, the deep-down, rich weight of iron that makes Fai’s mouth water, that tightens his throat with as much desperate thirst as the sound of Kurogane’s heartbeat pumping that same heat through the whole of his body; but it’s at his arm too, a faint tang of oil and the cool weight of steel even warmed from its natural chill by the connection point to Kurogane’s body. The two are distinct, uncommon surfaces forced into a join by magic as much as machinery; with the taste on his tongue Fai isn’t surprised that Kurogane’s body is protesting the weight, is resisting a more complete connection. It’s not a perfect solution, not a replacement for the sacrifice he made in exchange for Fai himself any more than the golden glow of Fai’s remaining eye is the same as he used to be; but they’re together, in spite of everything, and Fai can’t find it in him to regret that, no matter how much it has cost them both to make it to this point.

He lingers against Kurogane’s arm for long minutes, tasting the droplets of the other’s blood like a rich wine metered out to an impossibly slow trickle, kissing against the angry swelling of the other’s skin as if he can ease the pain there for the touch of his mouth, as if his kiss might bring the cool of ice with it instead of the heat of the life that Kurogane shares out with him, Fai’s existence as linked with the beat of the heart in Kurogane’s chest as the other’s own. It can’t be much comfort to the physical pain, not when Fai has no more to offer than the weight of his lips and the touch of his tongue, but by the time the bleeding is clotting to a stop Kurogane’s shoulders have eased, and if the other’s breathing is still ragged Fai doesn’t think it’s pain under the sound anymore. Fai’s kneeling atop Kurogane’s lap, one arm draped around the other’s neck and his other hand bracing feather-gentle contact at Kurogane’s hip; when he moves away from that metal-marked shoulder it’s only to draw across, following the line of Kurogane’s collarbone under his skin to the dip at the center of the other’s chest, to press the damp of a kiss that has only the radiance of heat without the rich tang of blood to go with it. Kurogane’s back arches, his right hand flexes against the small of Fai’s back, and Fai sets a hand against Kurogane’s uninjured shoulder and lets himself slide back and down in the loose tumble of his clothes around him. His knees come to the floor, buffered in their landing by the weight of fabric and the languid pace of his movement, and Fai slides his hand down Kurogane’s shoulder and across his chest as he leans in to resume his slow path down the other’s body.

His lips find hot skin everywhere they go: the taut dark of a nipple, the pale line of a scar cutting over the curve of ribs, the straining flex of muscle along the flat of Kurogane’s stomach. Kurogane’s hand slides up, giving up the arch of Fai’s spine to curl against the back of his neck instead, to settle to a steadying hold just against the top of the other’s spine, and Fai keeps working his way down, over the shadows at Kurogane’s navel and to the start of dark hair leading down from it to the top of the other’s pants. Fai turns his head to the side, fitting his lips to the angle of Kurogane’s hip, where some long-ago injury has faded to a starburst of healed-over skin, and he lets his hands draw down to the front of Kurogane’s pants to unfasten the weight of them without turning the focus of his vision to the process. He doesn’t need to see what he’s doing for this, not with the familiarity of experience and the ache of desire to urge him on, and he’s lifting his head as quickly as Kurogane’s pants are coming open, taking a breath and parting his lips even as he slides his hands in against the heat of the other’s length and ducks in to take Kurogane back against the warm wet of his mouth.

Kurogane tastes like metal here too. Fai still has the tang of the other’s blood at the back of his tongue, still has the bite of steel burning in his throat; the bitter of salt at his lips is all part of that too, just another component of the shadow-dark heat that is Kurogane, the rich weight of life that he carries with him everywhere he goes. His arm tastes like pain, his blood like wine; his cock tastes of desire, hot and sultry and so heady that Fai’s own length twitches untouched, as if he’s filling his veins with Kurogane’s pleasure as readily as his blood. He presses in closer, taking Kurogane back over his tongue and far into his mouth, urging his lips farther against the solid heat of the other’s shaft sliding in to fill the space of his voice, and over him Kurogane’s throat works on a groan that fits itself to the gusting force of an exhale. The hand at Fai’s neck slides up, the weight of Kurogane’s touch slipping in to cup the back of the other’s head more in affection than force, and Fai hums a soft note in the back of his throat and ducks in closer to bring Kurogane farther into his mouth.

Fai doesn’t think of his rhythm. Kurogane’s hand at his hair is gentle, steady and certain but without any demand in the strength of those fingers cradling against him; Fai can move as he pleases, fast or slow or desperate or languid, Kurogane’s pleasure left entirely to his own discretion. So he does, taking each stroke moment-to-moment, heartbeat to heartbeat: this one slow, lingering, tasting every inch of Kurogane’s cock at his lips and bearing down at his tongue, that one rapid enough to be nearly frantic as he coaxes a tang of hot salt from the head of the other’s cock at the back of his throat. His guide is the taste on his tongue, the heat of Kurogane’s desire building steadily with every motion of his head and every press of his lips, and more even than that: the rhythm of Kurogane’s heart pounding, the sound of it loud as a drumbeat to Fai’s attentive ears. Fai can feel his own blood going hot, as if the adrenaline in Kurogane’s body is surging into his with no consideration for the space between his existence and the other’s; the idea is arousing enough in itself to weight his lashes with heat, to darken his vision out of importance as his focus narrows to the space of his mouth, the hum in his throat, the touch tremoring with rising strain in his hair.

Kurogane doesn’t speak. He could, certainly -- he’s not stifled by the situation as Fai is, after all -- but Fai knows by now that Kurogane goes quiet in the grip of heat, that desire steals the other’s words from his lips even as it fills the dark of his gaze with novels of meaning. Fai would look up, if he could, if his hair weren’t over his face and his head weren’t ducked forward, but he can imagine the look in Kurogane’s eyes without needing to see it, can call to mind the soft at the other’s mouth without requiring the aid of the visual to prove the point. He’s seen it enough, after all: in the golden light of Nihon, when they wound themselves together with the tentative care befitting what had been Kurogane’s sickbed, and in the darkness after Tokyo, shadows lit by the crimson of spilling blood and the glow of need in Fai’s vampire-aided halfsight. But before then, too, Fai thinks, back when he smiled through the taste of his lies and turned aside from Kurogane’s gaze; because Kurogane has been saying the same thing all this time, in silence and words and deeds alike, and Fai has finally learned how to hear it. He can understand it now, clear as a shout in the salt on his tongue, in the ache in his chest, in that feather-gentle touch at the weight of his hair; and then there’s another touch, the cool weight of metal shifting as Kurogane lifts his other hand to frame Fai’s head between the weight of both palms, and Fai sucks a deep breath past his nose and lets the promise of Kurogane’s satisfaction draw him on. He tilts his shoulders forward, tightens his lips against want-hot skin, swallows hard to draw Kurogane entirely into his mouth; and then he lays hand to the heat twisting to a knot deep in his abdomen, and he groans, letting the want in him spill into vibration with a magic that is all his own, created in the space between his body and Kurogane’s fitting together. Kurogane’s fingers tighten, Kurogane’s breathing hitches deep in his chest, and Fai draws his tongue against the other’s shaft and pulls Kurogane’s orgasm free from his body, urging the spill of the other’s pleasure into long, quivering jolts of heat that run through the whole of his existence. Fai’s mouth is full of heat, his throat aches with the tang of it when he swallows; and he stays right where he is, savoring the whole long spill of Kurogane’s pleasure until the hands in his hair have gone slack and shaky with satisfaction.

Fai eases back slowly, moving carefully as he separates himself into his own existence and lets Kurogane free to return to his. The other’s metal-heavy arm falls back to his side as Fai draws away, urged down by its weight and the pain the burden of it carries with it, but Kurogane’s other hand stays close, his fingers winding into Fai’s hair even as the other pulls back to sit on his knees before looking up to Kurogane’s face. Kurogane is watching him, his eyes half-lidded under the shadow of his lashes and his lips parted over the heat of his breathing; his cheeks are tinged into color, the pallor of pain he had been carrying chased utterly away by the flush Fai’s mouth and tongue have worked into his veins. He looks warm, now, glowing with the heat of well-sated desire until Fai’s mouth catches to curl up onto a smile of satisfaction all his own.

He lifts his hand to touch against the line of Kurogane’s jaw. “You look better, Kuro-sama.”

Kurogane snorts. “Whose fault is that?” he says, the words rumbling over the heat in his chest to turn to rhetorical affection. His hand in Fai’s hair shifts, his palm catching to brace at the back of the other’s turned-up head with force enough to speak to his intention even before his arm flexes to turn the contact into a pull. “Come here and let me thank you for it.”

Fai laughs at that without having to think before he rocks forward, coming up onto his knees and bracing a hand alongside Kurogane’s hip as he slides himself forward off the ground and back onto the other’s lap. Kurogane is ready to catch him, his hand sliding free of Fai’s hair and down to brace at the arch of the other’s back to steady them even as his shoulders tip to turn them both in towards the support of the bed. Fai wraps both arms around Kurogane’s neck to take some of his weight on his own bearing, but Kurogane doesn’t hesitate in bracing his metal arm against the sheets as he tips to urge them down against the bed. Fai lands gently, laid out across the support more than dropped there, and Kurogane is moving down as quickly as he trusts Fai to the mattress, drawing away from the other’s mouth to kneel down at the foot of the bed and brace his left hand just alongside Fai’s hip. The motion is deliberate, slower than usual in consideration of what must still be an aching join, but Kurogane doesn’t pause to so much as flinch before he fits his fingers into the front of Fai’s pants to pull the fastenings loose. Fai can’t reach Kurogane kneeling between his legs without pushing to sit up and stretch to press his hands to the dark of the other’s hair; he stays where he is instead, sprawling over the bed and letting an arm fall to the pillows over his head while his gaze lingers on Kurogane’s heavy-lidded attention to what he’s doing.

“Kuro-pi,” Fai says, speaking gently even if his voice is clear enough to cut through the overheated distraction that is filling the room. “Is your arm okay?” He lifts his other arm from his side to reach out and gesture outstretched fingers towards the glint of metal bracing so solidly against the bed; there are still a few inches between his touch and Kurogane’s body, but it’s enough to make the direction of his question clear.

Kurogane barely even glances at him before he turns back down to what he’s doing. “It’s fine,” he says, short but with none of the strain to undermine the sincerity of the words. “I can do this much even as I am.”

Fai lifts his outstretched hand towards Kurogane’s hair, even if his touch falls short of contact. “Don’t hurt yourself, Kuro-chan.”

Kurogane’s gaze jumps up from the weight of his fingers against the front of Fai’s pants. His eyes are dark in the shadow of his hair and under the weight of his lashes, his mouth soft with the distracted focus he’s been turning on the other; but there’s no indication of that held-back pain that the day laid into the lines of his face, no resuming of that tension that he fought back into a grimace and a set jaw. He just looks intent, like he’s trying to read the whole narrative of Fai’s life from the gold of the other’s remaining eye; and then his mouth catches up at the corner to pull into a smirk that Fai can feel through his veins like lightning.

“I know,” Kurogane says, and pulls the weight of Fai’s clothing down to free hips. “I won’t.” And he braces his right hand at the bed, a human-warm match for the cool metal alongside Fai’s other hip, and when he ducks his head down it’s with both his shoulders flexing as he leans in to open his mouth and catch his lips around the head of Fai’s cock. Fai’s thighs tense, his lashes flutter with a surge of heat enough to grant them sudden weight, and when he stretches his hands out his fingers find dark hair as Kurogane shifts onto his elbows to take Fai back into his mouth. His hands touch against Fai’s hips, fingers warm and metal alike push up under the hem of Fai’s shirt to trace and grasp against the give of the other’s body just under the curve of his ribs, and Fai shuts his eye and lets his focus be persuaded out of himself by the work of Kurogane’s mouth and tongue and lips dragging over his cock while that paired hold braces him still against the tremors of responsive heat that course through him.

Fai doesn’t know how long it goes on. His sense of time gives way as quickly as his attention to his surroundings, as rapidly as even his framing within his own body dissolves; he fits himself into the rhythm of his heart racing, into the tremors locked between Kurogane’s unflinching hold, into each backwards pull and forward slide of the friction drawing what feels like all the heat of his body into the length of his cock in Kurogane’s mouth. His mouth is open, his lips parted on something voiceless, incoherent, unheard to any but the two of them; and Kurogane’s grip tightens in answer to unheard pleas, and his actions speed the faster, and Fai’s fingers slide to tangle into the dark of the other’s hair. He has one leg angled out over the bed, the other caught around the line of Kurogane’s hip; his whole body is flexing with each movement of Kurogane’s lips, strain coaxed into every fiber with some craving greater than thirst, richer than hunger, sweeping out to eclipse the whole of his identity with every gasping breath. His entire body is thrumming in time with the beat of his heart, with the rush of Kurogane’s blood filling his veins and granting him heat; and then Kurogane’s mouth tightens against him, and Kurogane’s tongue drags over him, and Fai moans outright, “ _Kuro_ ” spilling at his lips as his cock spills into the other’s mouth. Kurogane’s fingers brace to lock him in place where he lies, to hold them close against each other for the cresting waves of Fai’s orgasm, until by the time the tension is easing and his breathing is drawing deep and weighty in his chest Fai can’t frame the lines between himself and the other with any measure of clarity.

Kurogane slides away gently, moving with care even under the unhesitating pull he takes back to lift himself onto the support of his elbows, and when Fai’s arms flex Kurogane rocks forward obediently, favoring his metal arm as he slides back up over the other’s body spread out beneath him. His gaze is still dark as ever, still the same unwavering attention he has always turned on Fai, even before the other knew to see it for what it was, even when the weight of it was more a burden than a comfort; now it’s enough to glow across Fai’s cheeks like the heat is rising to his face to answer the other’s command, to brighten at the inside of his chest with true happiness until he can’t help but to let the warmth of it break into a smile. Kurogane’s gaze flickers down, dropping from Fai’s gold-washed eye to the shape of the other’s mouth and back again, like he’s checking his understanding; it’s only then that his own lips curve up at the corners into the surrender of happiness. His gaze softens, the lines of his expression give way to warmth, and Fai slides both hands in to cradle the back of Kurogane’s head and draw the other in and down to fit their mouths together.

Kurogane’s blood tastes like iron, his body like steel, his desire like electricity; but against Fai’s lips, his mouth always tastes like a promise.


	8. Understood

Some days are better than others.

The weight of his arm is never quite the way it was. There’s a delay in the response of steel and wires, a flicker of hesitation before Kurogane’s replaced fingers will curl to a fist or his tendons will tighten to raise his arm. He’s grateful that it was his left arm that he sacrificed; even after deliberate, conscious practice, he’s never as fluid in his combat with his offhand, after that. He learns to move a little more slowly, turning his motions into an almost-dance where he’s thinking of his next move before his present action is completed, stringing together a series of thoughts into one graceful chain of movement; he can hold his own against most opponents, that way, and can win outright in many cases. It’s enough for defense, anyway, which is what he mostly does now; his old days of proving his strength at the edge of a sword are long past him, and he doesn’t look back to miss them.

It’s not just the effect on his combat prowess that Kurogane notices. There’s the pain, too, some days better and some worse: sometimes he can hardly close his fingers around the hilt of his sword for the spiking pain that lances into his shoulder and bleeds color into the dark of his habitual clothes. On days like that Kurogane keeps his arm as still as he can, tucked under the weight of his cloak or angled to support some of the weight of it at the line of his belt, and he feels Fai’s eyes on him like a weight, tracking his every movement as if judging the price, as if tallying the sacrifice. Those nights are the hardest, when Fai’s sky-blue eyes have gone dark and distant with self-recrimination Kurogane can never entirely pull free from him; sometimes they don’t sleep at all, for the slow, languid persuasion Kurogane offers to push aside that old echo of self-loathing, that whisper that wonders about worth, about value, about benefit and cost, as if Kurogane wouldn’t give up a thousand bodies entire to keep Fai with him. Those nights are hard ones, long and dark with things Fai doesn’t say but Kurogane feels in the damp of tears against his skin and over the other’s cheeks, and Kurogane always finds himself waiting for the dawn with relief  so strong it’s a pressure in his throat that at least he can be here with Fai when he’s needed.

It’s not always bad, though. The arm seems to settle better with time, as Kurogane’s body protests the weight of it less and he gets better at identifying a bad day before he’s exacerbated the problem; Fai’s eyes stay bright for weeks at a stretch and Kurogane wins every training match he has with Syaoran’s slow-improving technique. And on the good nights, after days marred by nothing more than the usual inconveniences that come with travel, Kurogane can turn his body to more satisfying ends than even his practice bouts can grant him.

Today was a good day. Kurogane’s shoulder is steady, today, even after long training exercises bearing the weight of his sword offhand while he talked Syaoran through a new pattern of attack. Fai’s smile came easy, brilliant alongside his laughter and amused comments as the audience he formed at the sidelines of their practice ring, and they made it to a village just before the sun sank below the horizon. Their meal was simple but savory, rich with spices and unfamiliar flavors that Syaoran hesitated over and Kurogane found to his liking, and with the evening they retired to the privacy of their separate rooms and the opportunity offered within. Fai had held the door open, and Kurogane had pushed it shut and drawn the lock into place, and then they were coming towards each other, reaching to put their hands to best use against the weight of each other’s clothes while they kissed the heat of anticipation against the shift of warm lips.

They make it to the bed, eventually. One of the greatest advantages to a good day, Kurogane thinks, is the freedom of motion it gives him; in this case, the ability to lift Fai’s feet off the floor and bear him bodily across the distance of their shared room to the wide soft of the bed set at the corner. Fai laughs against Kurogane’s mouth, his lips curving on delight as he surrenders without protest to the urging of the other’s mismatched hands, and when Kurogane topples him down onto the bed he’s as pliant, falling across the sheets and looking up at Kurogane through the shadow of lashes heavy enough to turn the pale of his eyes indigo with possibility. Kurogane can hardly be expected to resist that, even if he cared to try, and in practice he’s coming in before Fai has even caught his breath, taking advantage of the current strength of his left arm to brace both hands over the other’s shoulders and lean down to cast Fai into the warm weight of his shadow before he catches his mouth flush against the curve of the other’s lips.

They come together smoothly. This is familiar with practice, the heat of desire shared as far back as those first desperate days in Shura and the strain and give of greater intimacy learned since Nihon, with the work of three good hands and the taste of blood on Fai’s tongue as often as heat. There’s no blood tonight, though, no trace of that purchase price for Fai’s life that Kurogane had offer without hesitation: just Fai, both eyes clear and wide and blue as a springtime morning, and Kurogane with a pair of hands to lay claim to the other’s narrow hips and draw Fai in close against the ache of want building in his own body. They work together to ease natural tension, to work slick fingers into the give of Fai’s body while their breath catches together into the pressure of anticipation; and then Fai’s leg is around Kurogane’s hip, metal fingers are bracing gently against the dip of Fai’s spine, and they slide together in one elegant stroke, their bodies fitting into each other with as much ease as if they were meant to be like this, as if they were always intended only for each other. Fai’s arm falls heavy over Kurogane’s shoulders, Fai’s lashes flutter to languid pleasure over the bright of his eyes, and Kurogane watches Fai’s face, and feels heat aching in his chest, and rocks himself forward to fit into the rhythm of Fai’s breathing against his mouth.

Time smoothes long. There’s no rush, no hurry, no press of haste or the frantic edge of the unknown bearing down on them: just the length of the night, and the space of their bed, and the heat of skin pressing flush against bare skin, golden tan and moonlight pale as close against each other as the press of their mouths, as the curl of their breathing falling into a single joined rhythm. Kurogane’s hips move, Fai’s leg tightens; when Fai gasps Kurogane moans, when Fai arches Kurogane curves, their bodies moving together with as much fluid grace as if they really are a single entity, as if they have learned the shape of each other s thoroughly as Fai has learned the magic of a whistle in his throat and Kurogane has memorized the weight of metal at his shoulder. They have spent months together, have traversed universes at each other’s side, have paid for this with blood and hurt and loss and guilt all for the sake of this, here, now: bodies pressing close together, breathing drawing taut on slow-building tension, pleasure rising and falling like the tide as they work each other to unexplored heights. Kurogane can feel Fai hard against his stomach, can track the shudder of want in the flex of the other’s length at his skin with each forward stroke of his own hips; and he’s as transparent, with his chest working over deep lungfuls of air and his thighs quivering with involuntary strain where they are pressing close to Fai’s. Fai is gasping, moaning deep-down pleasure and pleading incoherent need and framing Kurogane’s name over and over and over again, a talisman made magic at the shift of his lips; but Kurogane presses his forehead to Fai’s shoulder, and breathes in deep of the other’s heat, and lets his body do the speaking for him.

They draw it long. There’s no conversation, no discussion of their intent before they start; but the frantic haste of their preparation melts on contact with each other, and Fai’s curving grace and Kurogane’s solid thrusts fall into a deliberate slowness to linger as long as they can, to stay framed by the other’s body as long as they may. But even Kurogane’s strength has limits, and Fai has always known how to press him to the utmost, until finally he can feel the pressure of completion thrumming through the whole of his body, as if he’s the string of a bow drawn back and held by shaking fingers. He can feel inevitability coming for him, building against the length of his spine to strain across the muscle of his shoulders, and it’s then that he tightens his hold on Fai’s back and frees his other hand from where it has settled against the curve of the other’s neck. Fai’s fingers flex against Kurogane’s hair and the curve of his hip, where his touch has found its way to comfort; but when he takes a breath Kurogane can taste anticipation on the sound, and Fai doesn’t curve away as Kurogane’s fingers slide down between their bodies to find the heat-slick head of the other’s cock.

Kurogane presses his hand down low, taking the time to steady his grip around Fai’s length as if he’s fitting his fingers to the familiar shape of the other’s desire, and when he strokes up it’s in time with the drawn-slow pace of his hips thrusting into the heat of Fai’s body. It’s a gentle pull, intended to coax the other up over the edge they’re both already trembling against instead of forcing him to it, but Fai’s body still goes taut in the first shudder of reaction, from his fingers in Kurogane’s hair to his leg hooked up around the other’s knee. His back arches, his spine curving to pin Kurogane’s grip on him flush between their bodies, and against Kurogane’s cock there’s a spasm of tension as Fai tightens against the other inside him in time with that same full-body shudder. Kurogane loses his breath, the air in his lungs spilling to a groan of unthinking heat, and his shoulders tense as if he can hold himself back through sheer force of will, as if he can cling to the edge of the precipice without toppling over. He would stop, he thinks, if he were less close, if he didn’t have so many heat-long minutes of rhythm guiding him; but his body moves on instinct instead of intent, his hips drawing back for another thrust even as his neck and thighs tighten with his attempt to fight back the surge of pleasure swelling against the length of his cock. His hand pulls up over Fai, his movements falling into clumsy haste as a last resort as he seizes a breath to fill his lungs, to hold himself to control for another second, another heartbeat, and it’s just as the air is hissing past his teeth that Fai’s fingers slide through his hair, and Fai murmurs “Kuro-sama” against his mouth with all the languid weight of pleasure on the sound, and Kurogane can feel that tension in him slip free of the archer’s grip to throw him into the inevitable conclusion. His hips buck up, his breathing spends itself on a shout, and between their bodies his hand jerks clumsy force in time with the rush of heat that courses through his body to spill into Fai beneath him. It’s hardly graceful, hardly the elegant work of intent, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because there’s the taste of Fai’s moan hot at his lips, and Fai’s cock twitching in his hold, and Fai’s pleasure pulsing between them as surely as Kurogane is offering his own. They hold to each other for the length of their orgasm, Fai’s fingers in Kurogane’s hair and Kurogane’s hand at Fai’s back and the both of them trembling through the force of pleasure drawn long in the sharing; until finally Kurogane’s shoulders ease, and Fai shudders a sigh, and they both go slack against the bed to let the afterglow of pleasure crest over their intertwined bodies.

Kurogane doesn’t know how long they stay like that. It could be a handful of seconds; it could be long, lingering minutes pulled out to the full range of their possibility by the heat in the air and the weight of satisfaction in his limbs. Eventually Fai shifts under the weight of Kurogane’s arm but it’s not to pull away; he just tips his shoulders in closer and draws his fingers to wander through the strands of the other’s hair. Kurogane shuts his eyes and turns his head in, letting his breathing slow and steady against the line of Fai’s collarbone as that touch runs pleasant shivers down his spine and into his pleasure-drained body; when he shifts his arm it’s to settle the crook of his elbow against Fai’s waist and fit the smooth metal of his forearm along the line of the other’s back. He can’t feel the heat of Fai’s skin directly through the metal any more than he can sense the damp of clinging sweat against the polished fingertips at the other’s shoulder, but the strength in his hold keeps their chests close enough together that he can feel the thud of Fai’s heart beating in time with his own, and that is comfort enough to merit the effort.

“Kuro-rin,” Fai finally says, speaking softly into the peace that has fallen over the space of their room and the slow rhythm of their present existence. One of his hands drifts through Kurogane’s hair to touch at the back of the other’s neck, to trail the line of it against muscle and tendon to the join to the weight of metal, made painless by the luck of the day. Fai’s fingers fit to the shape of it, pressing gently against the connection like he’s testing the give. “What are you thinking of?”

Kurogane hesitates. He can feel the pace of his heartbeat in his chest, can sense the quiet in the room like a blanket over their bodies; it would be easy to let it linger, to leave the words unsaid and drift down into the comfort of sleep with Fai here in his arms as they are. But he remembers too well the bitter taste of silence in Shura, when all his words fell meaningless into the pool of those uncomprehending blue eyes, and he’s learned to not take the gift of Fai’s attention lightly.

“Youou.”

Fai’s fingers in Kurogane’s hair still, made hesitant by confusion. “What?”

“That’s my real name.” Kurogane lifts his head from Fai’s shoulder so he can look up instead, can meet the startled blue of those clear eyes with the force of his own stare. “Youou.”

There’s a pause. Fai’s not smiling, either his put-upon cheer or the carefully sincere one Kurogane has learned to draw free from him; he’s just looking at the other, his eyes wide as he meets Kurogane’s unflinching gaze. Neither of them move for a moment; then Fai’s lashes flutter, and he takes a breath with enough intention that Kurogane can feel the force of it in the air between them.

“Youou,” he says, carefully, and Kurogane feels the sound of his true name on Fai’s lips like a brand, magic enough to tie his soul to the other’s across any span of time, across any fractured boundary of space. Fai blinks again and presses his lips together; and then he smiles, careful and uncertain but flickering in his eyes all the same. “What are you thinking of?”

“You,” Kurogane says at once, without hesitating at all. “Yuui.” Fai’s eyes go wide, his breath catches, and Kurogane grins at him, the edge of amusement drawing at his lips in spite of himself. Fai’s mouth twists for a moment as he visibly fights for composure, and Kurogane pushes himself up against his elbow at the bed and ducks in to kiss the curve of Fai’s mouth just as the startled joy in the other’s eyes breaks free into a smile at his lips.

No matter where they go from here, Kurogane is sure they can always make themselves understood to each other.


End file.
